


Bingo

by betp



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dubcon: sex pollen made them do it, F/M, M/M, Panic Attack, descriptions of a terrible past relationship, fire description, non-graphic mpreg for about five seconds in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betp/pseuds/betp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek scowls. </p>
<p>Or, the one that was supposed to be every item on the Sterek bingo chart and ended up being a Derek manpain feels jamboree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. October

Derek scowls.

"This place is kind of a wasteland of ruined dreams," Stiles declares, shuffling his way into Derek's house. "Like the Bat Cave, only more meaningful and with less computers." Stiles has a way of acting timid and bold at the same time, like he fucking lives here, but he's also a guest. He nudges the cracked door shut behind him with his sneaker.

The entryway is huge, vaulted ceilings and a grand staircase; his voice would probably echo magnificently if it weren't for the fact that the house is a charred, blackened frame and little more. Derek stands at the top of the staircase. On Christmas morning when he was nine, he and Laura stood where he is now, their bare feet pawing in the carpet. They weren't allowed downstairs until dawn. The tree glittered tantalisingly. Jerky had been left for Santa; all that remained were crumbs on a porcelain plate. A half-drunk glass of orange juice.

"What if you rebuilt it?" Stiles asks. Squirming, toe in the dust on the floor, shoulders doing that marionette thing where they jerk into what would, on a less awkward person, be a shrug. "Just fixed it up a little?"

Derek continues to glare.

Stiles wants—what? What does Stiles want? What is his goal here? Because Derek can't even begin to fathom a Stiles that just wants to improve his local sourwolf's living conditions. When he was five, Derek built a precarious tower of blocks, spent hours on it. His older brother, then ten, offered to help. Derek was reluctant, but his brother said he had a great idea. Derek scooted over. Then his brother kicked it over. Derek stared, eyes wide with outrage, at the giant spill of multicoloured hunks of wood until his mother told him to pick it up.

"Just the kitchen?" Stiles wheedles.

Derek jumps down from the stairs, top to bottom. Lands with a shaking thud that causes dust to fall like confetti into his and Stiles' hair. Stiles takes a step back, but doesn't look nearly threatened enough for Derek's taste. "Why do you care so much about the state of my fucking house, Stiles? Don't you have _better_ things to worry about?"

"Ever since we ghostbusted, things have been quiet. I think we can afford to focus on ridding Beacon Hills of the risk of tetanus and pneumonia. One sourfaced asshole at a time."

Derek rolls his eyes. "It's fine, Stiles." If he doesn't want to get tetanus or pneumonia, he can just not _come_ here. It's pretty simple.

"It's better than the warehouse," Stiles tells him, blinking rapidly; dust coats his lashes; "but not by much."

"What're you—"

"Oh my god. For _you_ to _live_ in, dude." Derek stares, eyes wide with outrage, at Stiles' face until Stiles speaks again. "You need to live in a place that is habitable? But you seem inclined to just—" he gestures, to Derek, to the house, to life in general "—wallow and punish yourself a lot."

When Derek was four, he tended to get overlooked in a family as large as his, especially during family reunions, and he was pretty sensitive to it. He was also a fuckup; it seemed like everything he did turned out wrong. He was always getting shooed out of rooms, asked why he didn't go find his cousin Lana, why didn't he go outside, why didn't he go look at a book for a while. When he stumbled and broke a vase, and his mother scolded him, he ran to his room and cried until dinnertime. Derek punished himself by banning himself from his bed for a week. It would have gone on longer, but Laura found him sleeping on the floor and tattled. Derek narrows his eyes. Stiles doesn't seem to notice; rather, he seems reassured by it.

"I'll help," he offers Derek optimistically.

Dully, Derek replies, "I don't need your charity."

Stiles just looks at him with indulgent frustration on his pretty face. "Then don't do it for you, Leopold. Do it for Isaac. And your shit-crazy uncle."

Leopold? When Derek was thirteen, he went with his aunt and cousin to a farmer's market. He was dubiously examining a table of rutabaga when this strange girl came up and stood next to him. "That's a lot of beets," she said.

"I think it's rutabaga," he replied.

She turned and looked at him, horrified and perplexed, like he'd just requested sex with her dead grandmother. She edged away from him. Derek never did figure out what happened there.

"Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is the guy they named _masochism_ after," Stiles explains matter-of-factly when Derek's face betrays his bewilderment. "You're a masochist."

Derek scowls.


	2. November

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They begin to fix up Derek's house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes my chapters are super short, sometimes they're super long. Sometimes there's sex, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it really isn't. Basically I'm a fickle woman and you should hit me with a rolled up newspaper.

Stiles calls the project "Operation: Bat Cave." Derek complains his way through the demolition, whines his way through the drywall, and downright hisses like a cat when Stiles shows up on his porch, beaming and laden with buckets of blue and yellow paint. But they do the housework diligently. Isaac is positively _volatile_ with pleasure, though, so there is that.

"We hadn't painted the house in, like, seven years," Isaac says almost lyrically as they finish the final coat to the top floor. Emanating an attempt at nonchalance, the vulnerability evident in his scent. Stiles is wearing a backwards baseball cap, his plaid shirt tied around his waist, underneath the overlarge t-shirt he borrowed from Derek. He listens to Isaac talk, this serene half-smile on his face as he paints. Derek stops looking at him. "We had the paint sitting in the basement. But we never did it."

"I bet it didn't need it as much as this place," Stiles says. Paint dribbles down his wrist, and he goes to scratch an itch on his face and ends up with a smear of paint on his jaw. He notices Derek looking, furrows his brow. Derek blinks. Gestures, _you have some shit on your face_. Stiles makes an O shape with his mouth, hauls up the collar of Derek's t-shirt to wipe at his face—the t-shirt he borrowed, not the t-shirt Derek is wearing. Derek does not look at Stiles' stomach, the trail of hair there that he can see when the shirt comes up. In fact, he does not even look at Stiles. He looks at the ceiling—a spider. The wall! Derek looks at the wall. Stiles has gotten all of the paint off his face. Derek stops looking at him.

When Laura turned sixteen, their parents let her pick the colour to paint her room, and she chose a wretched, dark, saturated plum. Derek said it looked like a bruise, a bruise on a _human_ , the kind that festers and turns pukey-green, but Laura simply grinned wolfishly and left a starkly purple handprint on his face. He just stood there and grimaced with her palm over his features. There was a photo, but it burned.

"I kept hoping one day we'd do it," Isaac goes on thoughtfully. "Something about fixing up the house always put Dad in a good mood. We'd bond over it. Me and him and Cam."

They paint in silence. Finish the room. Stand back, breathe in the paint fumes, and admire their work.

Isaac got a little bit on the baseboard, and Stiles got a little bit on the ceiling. There are also light blue, Stiles-sized handprints on all three of them. Stiles has a stupid sense of humour. Isaac is radiating this sense of surety, pleasure, suppressing a beaming elation as they open the window and gaze about the room. "We did good," he eventually says, and Stiles thumps him on the back, nodding. Evidence of Stiles' affection stark against the white of his t-shirt.

After a bit, Stiles steps up next to Derek. Grins impishly. He leaves a blue handprint on Derek's face, and Derek just stands there and grimaces.


	3. December

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek ends up at the store like driftwood ends up on the shore.

Derek is pretty passive when it comes to home décor, etc. One could probably guess that based on his willingness to live at the Hale estate until the hunters took it over for their training ground, and in the warehouse until the hunters left. And back at the Hale house until Stiles pitched a fit.

It was functional, and that was all Derek expected of it. He may not have had, like, an ensuite bathroom with a jacuzzi tub, but there was running water and a bed. Well, mattress. Maybe it was a bit—morbid, but Derek isn't picky.

Stiles is picky. Hence _Operation: Bat Cave_.

"Ironically enough," Stiles is saying in Target, leaning hunched over on the handle to the cart as they wander through housewares, "the goal of _Operation: Bat Cave_ was to rid the house of bats and all other cavelike qualities."

"I like caves," Derek says flatly, eyeing an advertisement of a little girl laughing her ass off at a hot dog. Derek's never had that much fun eating a hot dog. And he likes pickle relish okay, but this chick is piling it on, in _heaps_. _Way_ too much relish. He has to walk quickly to catch back up with Stiles, who is two aisles down in the bathroom supplies section.

Stiles doesn't even glance at him. "Well, you're dumb and wrong. Hence Stiles' involvement. Look, check it out." He picks up a porcelain toothbrush holder and holds it next to his face Vanna White style, beaming. "You can get a _wolf-themed bathroom set_. Please can you get this? Can this be yours?"

Derek leans forward and makes eye contact with the wolf. He thinks it's actually supposed to be Balto. He might have relented if it had looked a little more like his alpha form. "This is nice," he says to Stiles. "Oh, wait, hold on a second: no, it isn't. At all."

"Sarcasm. Nice. You're giving Stiles a run for his money," Lydia says airily. Stiles jumps at her sudden arrival. She smacks the toothbrush holder out of Stiles' hand, and it lands with a clang on the metal shelf. "Never touch that gaudy thing again. It's constructed purely of kitch." Then she dumps an armful of bedding into the cart. It's grey, at least. Derek stares at it.

"If you'd only hit it harder, it would have broken," Stiles says, "and then we would have been forced to purchase it. It could be glued together in Derek's house by tonight. But no. You had to punch it _gently_."

"I don't need a toothbrush holder," Derek tells them, choosing to operate under the delusion that one or both of them will listen. "No one needs a toothbrush holder. That's what cups are for."

Derek used to come to Target with his mom, get toilet paper and new shoes and cereal and shit. She was big on throw pillows. They always came home with a new set of throw pillows for the couch. Every time Mom got sick of the throw pillows she already had, she'd get more, and there was this evergrowing pile of discarded rejects in the basement, in the linen closet, in the guest room, in the garage. Derek was fond of throw pillows, too, because if you had friends over, you could go all over the house grabbing them and put them all in one place, and land in them like a big-ass pile of leaves. Only instead of leaves, it was pillows. He and Laura never got throw pillows because they always moved after two or three weeks. Skipped out on more than a few security deposits for it, left behind many a curbside futon, but they could never stay still.

"I _like_ kitch," Stiles whines at Lydia, who is as immoveable as the ocean. "Maybe I'll get it for Scott," Stiles says, looking at Derek but speaking to himself. He snorts at it, and then puts it in the child seat of the cart, next to Lydia's purse.

"You're insufferable," Lydia tells Stiles. It might have been with a note of fondness, but Derek can never tell with Lydia. She says everything with the same soft air of gentle disdain. "If you're going to insist on shopping at _Target_ , of all places, at least stay away from the things that look like they _belong_ in Target."

"There is _nothing wrong_ with Target," Stiles insists. "Aside from their management policies and their alliance with the Salvation Army." He shrugs. "I let you upgrade from Big Lots. Be happy."

Lydia fixes Stiles with a steely stare. "That wasn't an upgrade, it was an escape from perdition. Big Lots is the scourge of capitalism." Derek gets a chill.

Stiles grins at her, counteracting her icy acidity with his own easy warmth. "You're really pretty," he quips.

Lydia ignores this comment, because she's really pretty _all_ the time and she knows it. When Stiles recruited Lydia to help furnish Derek's rebuilt home, she narrowed her eyes at them both, calculating, and then said, "Fine," and slammed the door in their faces. Derek looked at Stiles, and Stiles looked at Derek, and then Stiles smiled and said, "She should change her name to Prettia."

Lydia picks up metallic bathroom items by her forefinger and thumb and starts dropping them into the cart one by one. "Derek needs things that are pretending to be stylish," she's lecturing. "Just like Derek."

Derek balks at being called a poser by a seventeen-year-old who makes believe she sucks at bowling. "I'm not pretending to be stylish."

She squints at him like he went blurry. "The hair," she says. "The jacket." She starts counting off on pink-gloved fingers. "The jeans, the car, the tight shirts, the boho stubble." Derek glowers. She raises her eyebrows at him, makes a face as if she's about to deliver slightly painful news. "The sunglasses."

"I'm not _pretending_ to be _anything_ ," Derek says, resisting the urge to stamp his foot. An urge that tends to flare up whenever he interacts with Lydia Martin. "Maybe I just _like_ those things." Jesus.

"The attitude," Lydia grumbles, tipping a towel rack into the cart with her fingertips.

Stiles just watches these interchanges and chuckles, letting her irritate the bejesus out of Derek, treat him like her useless little brother or something. Instead of an older guy, and a werewolf, and capable of tearing out her spinal column with the ease one might expect from pulling dental floss from its plastic container. Lydia only fears the intangible. Derek is tangible. Lydia finagles Derek into furnishing his house with Lydia's style. Derek doesn't know why he puts up with any of them.

"Because you love us," Stiles says the next day, putting up a framed photograph. Derek walks up to it and squints, because it's not an actual photograph. It's a photoshop job. Everyone's heads on stick figure bodies. The werewolves' eyes are all flashing conspicuously. Lydia, Stiles, and Derek are evidently riding a rocket ship. Scott is fighting a laser-eyed tiger. Boyd is on the moon, planting a flag with his own face on it. Erica is on a beach. Uncle Peter is in a cage. " _Look_ at us," says Stiles. Derek starts, having become absorbed in the travesty. "Aren't we just the cutest family you've ever seen in your _life_?"

"This is," says Derek. There are no words. "This is," he begins again.

"An abomination?" offers Stiles.

Derek stares at him. And nods.

"Happy holidays," Stiles says with a roguish grin as he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mom has what you might call an overpopulation of throw pillows. The throw pillows are forming their own colonies. They have languages and customs. 
> 
> The photoshopped monstrosity exists; you're welcome. It's on my Tumblr somewhere.


	4. January

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek likes Scott more than Scott likes Derek.

One of Derek's uncles was human when he married into the family, and he got the bite from Derek's grandmother not long after the honeymoon was over. Afterward, he was really excited about his increased olfactory abilities. He spent a lot of time sniffing Derek and his little sister animatedly and then declaring what they'd eaten for breakfast. His sister was five, and she laughed every time. Derek was nine, and it irritated him. It still irritates him.

"Stiles smells like you," Scott announces, and Derek rolls his eyes. "Have you been in his house? Has he been in your house? You smell like him, too. Why do you smell like Stiles?"

It's obvious that the house is Stiles' doing. The Star Wars figurines lined up on the mantle alone should indicate Stiles' regular presence. Derek doesn't feel like explaining this to Scott, who is pervicaciously sniffing the air. "I don't smell like Stiles," Derek replies, fake saccharine. "I smell like Derek."

Scott squirms and frowns. "No. I can smell his soap, and I can smell his gum, and I can smell sarcasm and grass and tacos and—"

"You can smell Derek," Derek interrupts. He kicks at the rug that's rolled up on the floor, unfurling it across the new hardwood. It's red; Stiles picked it out at the Home Depot, saying it matched Derek's eyes. The salesperson was confused, because Derek has hazel eyes. The rug finishes unrolling, flops on top of Scott's sneakers. "All you smell is Derek. Derek Hale."

"Stop talking like that," Scott snaps. Kicks his feet back, out from under the rug, like it's the one pissing him off and not Derek.

"What? In the third person? Derek can talk however he wants in Derek's house."

"Whatever!" Scott turns, storms out of the house.

"Later, Scott," Derek calls pleasantly after him.

As Scott climbs into his mother's car, Derek hears him huff, "Stiles must be rubbing off on you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, that one was short. I'm sorry; that month was uneventful.


	5. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is an angel.

Apparently Scott figures out what's going on, because the next time Stiles is there, putting up more of his ridiculous pictures, Scott is also there.

"Where do you find the time to _do_ this shit?" Derek asks wonderingly, examining a framed picture of stick-figure Allison Argent (which—Allison _Argent_?) roller-blading down Derek's 8th grade yearbook photo.

"You ask that like this shit takes a long time," Stiles says out of one side of his mouth, a nail sticking out of the other side. "I do them when I'm supposed to be researching in Composition. I've already got the final paper done." Derek stops looking at Stiles' forearms while he hammers a nail into the wall.

"This one is the best one, bro," Scott says, grinning at one of the ones in the stairwell. It's a photo of two old men playing chess in a park, but they have Derek and Scott's heads. "It's so meaningful."

Stiles takes the nail out of his mouth to tell him, "It's symbolic of the eternal battle between two sides of the same coin." He puts the nail back between his lips, holds the hammer between his knees, hangs a picture frame.  

"Nice," Scott approves.

Derek blusters up behind Stiles and sees that he's hanging up a legitimate photograph now, one of Derek and a couple of his sisters on Halloween. Derek is missing a tooth, and wearing cat ears. Laura is Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Cora is a werewolf. (Cora was a werewolf every year. She never stopped thinking it was funny.) "Look at you, aren't you the sweetest," Stiles says. Derek doesn't reply. "This is the Halloween Hallway," Stiles tells Derek grandly, straightening the frame. He gestures down the hall, and sure enough, there's an entire row of photos of seven-year-olds.

Boyd as a knight, with a girl (probably his sister) dressed as Kim Possible.

Erica as the queen of hearts, with a black pug dressed as Alice.

Lydia as some kind of winged cheerleader.

A lanky, curly-haired boy wearing a C-3PO mask at a class party. Isaac, probably.

Jackson as Spider-man.

Scott as a robot, costume constructed of cardboard, Scott pleased as punch.

Stiles, with a broken arm, as an angel.

"My dad was trying to teach me how to swing a bat," Stiles explains. "They tried T-ball, but I couldn't follow directions very well?" He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. "I think the phrase my coach used was 'unteachable.'" He laughs. "Anyway, so my dad was trying to teach me, and somehow I fell and broke my arm. We still can't really explain how it happened."

"Clearly you died from it," Derek says, touches a fingertip to the silver tinsel halo in the photo.

"Yeah, you'd think I'd go to the other place." Stiles chuckles to himself. "Well, I was innocent back then." Derek's giving him a weird look, so Stiles expands, too loud, "This was pre-porn, you see."

"I'm mostly sure porn was invented a long time before that," Derek replies blandly.

Stiles sighs. "And he's a comedian. Great." He leaves the hallway, presumably to go find Scott, and Derek turns and finds a recent photo, of four months ago. A selfie, taken by Erica (who is wearing devil horns and a lot of lipstick), featuring Jackson (wearing zombie makeup and looking infuriated), Derek (resigned, uncostumed, eyes closed), and Stiles. Stiles is wearing a silly witch's hat, but he looks radiant, his skin rubescent. Lips tugged into a dopey grin.

Stiles is looking at Derek.

Derek stops looking at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Unteachable" was a word used to describe me as a child.


	6. March

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> March is when shit goes down.

Stiles probably doesn't remember it, because there was nothing particularly remarkable about the whole thing without strong senses to document it. But Derek remembers it, remembered it the second he saw Stiles again in the forest, mint mojito gum in his pocket, face contorting into weird expressions, Derek's new fellow beta wandering around looking for Laura and an inhaler. Remembered it instantly.

Not that it made any more sense twelve years later.

Derek was about to turn nine, and he was in the grocery store with his dad. There was some kid in the next aisle singing and running. "Honey, can't you just stay still for me for another few minutes?" Derek heard a woman sigh. "Do you want to ride in the cart again?"

"No," the kid insisted. Feet pounding all up and down the tile.

"Then just stay by the cart. Stay by me," the woman said, and the kid ran back to the cart, but a few seconds later he was darting away again.

Derek was starting to get pissed off, listening to this stupid kid treat the grocery store like a fucking McDonald's playplace. Derek was _almost nine_. He might as _well_ be a preteen already. Just over a year away from double-digits. At which point he might be allowed away from the kids' table at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Wolf Moon. He stood, hands in the pockets of his oversized jacket, watched his dad pick out soups. Derek hated soup. But he wasn't complaining! Because he was _too old for that shit_. Derek deserved a fucking medal.

"Der," said Dad absently. "Can you pop over, grab some Cheerios."

The _kid_ was in the cereal aisle. Derek sagged, pointed a disgusted and pleading look at the back of Dad's head. But he slouched over to the cereals anyway.

Right as he turned down the aisle, the kid crashed headlong into him, and Derek didn't know—doesn't know—how he missed him, didn't hear his tiny, light-up Spider-man sneakers thumping along right there. They careened to the floor, and Derek's head hit the floor with a crack. He was uninjured—or, if he was injured, it healed pretty instantaneously—and the surge of rage subsided just as quickly as it came. Because of the kid. Who crashed into him.

He was squirming, on top of Derek, and he apologised, dazed, like he wasn't sure what had happened, and the contact was soothing. And Derek realised he wasn't quite as floored by the kid knocking him onto the floor as the kid's scent. His scent, it was so—it was so—so _something_ that Derek couldn't even summon the energy it would take to get pissed off at him.

"Sorry," the kid said again to Derek once they were both on their feet, only partially coached by his mom.

Derek shrugged, unable to stop staring at the kid, his wide, brown eyes, the band-aid on his cheek, his one untied shoe, his comically large hooded sweatshirt. Couldn't have been more than five. Freckles and wavy brown hair and chewing on his lips and he offered Derek an unused band-aid with Batgirl on it, but Dad led him away. Said, "Clearly this is a sign we are eating _too damn much Cheerios_ ," to Derek confidentially to make him smile.

Derek got a cookie from the bakery for his troubles, but the cookie didn't smell nearly as good as the kid that knocked his socks off in the cereal aisle. Next time he saw him, he was sixteen and twitching and restless on Derek's property and Derek had much bigger fish to fry than some stupid, hyperactive kid who happens to smell better than a picnic on a field in summertime.

Not that Stiles even remembers that shit.

::

Derek's older brother's girlfriend used to sneak into the room they shared at night, through the window. Derek was just a kid, and sworn to secrecy, so he was never able to question his parents about the noises he'd hear after Fred banished him from the bedroom. "It's romantic," Laura'd inform him when it happened, while Derek pouted under her favourite green blanket in her ecchymotic room. "Someday I want someone to sneak into my room to see me."

Stiles doesn't find Derek's presence in his bedroom nearly as enchanting as any of the Hale siblings apparently would have, even though Derek didn't come in through the window. Stiles swears under his breath, glowers impressively, and chucks his backpack—which is pretty heavy, thank you very much—at Derek's head. Derek catches it and they have a frown jamboree. "Hello, _Derek_. To what do I owe this _exorbitantly unrequested_ delight?" Stiles asks.

"Nothing," Derek snaps back; "I just really felt like catching forty pounds to the face today. It's a hobby of mine."

"That so? I'm really glad you're doing it _here_ , Derek. Without permission." Stiles gestures at Derek like he's a recurring problem. Tosses his head with his words. "We've _talked_ about this."

"Not really," Derek says. Stares at the backpack in his hands. "You just got pissed off the last time I did it."

"And you didn't think there might have been some kind of underlying message behind that."

Derek squints, nods, wrinkles his nose sarcastically. "Ha. I have a _reason_ to be here."

Stiles makes a phone shape with his hand, holds it next to his head. "Hi, Stiles, it's me, Derek, calling you on the telephone like a normal person, which is possible because we both have telephones and I've used one before—"

"It was urgent, and I knew you'd be home from practice in, like, five—"

" _Oh my_ _god_ , knowing my schedule doesn't give you a pass from climbing in my window, asshole. In fact, it sort of accomplishes the opposite."

"I didn't climb in your window, Stiles. I picked the locks, obviously."

"M'kay, Mr. Ocean, thanks. Picking my locks is vastly better than climbing in my unlocked window. I can now sleep well, as I have been blessed with the breathtaking presence of Edward Sourstalk Cullen, the—the Mr. Darcy of Beacon Hills."

Derek stares at Stiles; there were too many pop culture references jammed into that monologue. If he's Mr. Darcy, who is Elizabeth? "Breathtaking," he repeats after a pause, the corners of his mouth twitching in a way that seriously pisses him off.

"Yeah, I guess you're also Maverick," says Stiles blithely, going over to his desk to empty his pockets onto it while he speaks. A wallet, a scratched cell phone, some keys, a stick of gum, a folded piece of notebook paper. "Kinda fits, with the leather jacket, and the sunglasses, and the total assdickery that is everything you say and do. Why're you really here, Mav?" He drops into his computer chair, and the action gives Derek a surge of his scent. Derek blinks.

"There are witches," Derek says. That isn't what he meant to say. He gets flustered while Stiles' mouth drops open. "I mean, they killed someone." Also not what he meant to say. The backpack smells like Stiles and wolfs bane; he drops it.  

"That's awesome," Stiles bursts out, springing to his feet like an air rocket. Then he recovers, seemingly against his will. Puts his hands on his slim hips. Derek stops looking at him. "I mean, witches are real?"

"Yes. And I need your help."

Cue dramatic zoom-in on their faces, crescendo into musical sting; cut to black, cut to commercial. But first Stiles pumps a fist and yells, "Fuck _yes_."

::

Stiles takes with him a defensive lacrosse stick, a picnic basket full of wolfs bane and jars of mountain ash, and a hunk of half-stale sourdough bread, which he offers to Derek in the forest with a wry smile. Derek smirks back and takes it. By the light of the half moon, they trek through the woods, deeper and deeper. Derek once came out here on a Halloween night with his best friend Alex to sneak cigarettes and alcohol. They got caught—which, it wasn't worth it at all because Derek found out that night he couldn't even get drunk—and Derek was grounded for a month. Technically, he's still grounded. Derek hands the bread back to Stiles.

"So," Stiles says around an unnecessarily large mouthful of bread, which he wads into one cheek so he can speak and eat simultaneously. "What exactly do you need from me that you couldn't get from your pack? Or Scott? Or _Jackson_?"

"Okay, first of all, Jackson is allergic to being helpful," Derek snipes immediately. Then he glances at Stiles, and Stiles is peering at him, expectant and unimpressed, as he chews. Gives a gesture like _well?_. Derek feels his ears go red, and he doesn't know why. He scowls into the darkness. "Witches have powers, and use plants, that can—control werewolves."

"Sounds shitty," Stiles says. Spraying crumbs. He swallows audibly. "Are humans unaffected?"

"Not _un_ affected," Derek says. Obviously. Dumb kid. "Just less. Much less."

When Derek was eight, he and his human cousin Ryan were cornered by a teenage witch. Ryan was eleven, old enough to smirk and call her Sabrina, and the witch was thirteen, young enough to get pissed off about it. Derek was chained to the spot. Not-Sabrina hadn't been anticipating human members of the pack, and she and Ryan fled in opposite directions. Ryan made it almost back to the house before she collapsed. Derek couldn't even make it a full step. It was like drowning in molasses.  

"How'd you break the spell?" Stiles' eager voice chiming at him is how Derek realises he was telling that story out loud.

"It wore off," Derek says, "after about ten minutes. The witch was young."

"That's awesome," Stiles says sincerely, and now he's asking a ridiculous amount of questions about witches, which Derek answers to the best of his ability.

No, witches can't fly.

No, they aren't like Elphaba or Harry.

Yeah, some of them worship Satan; that isn't relevant.

No, werewolves can't be witches.

No, witches and magic aren't necessarily connected.

I don't _think_ they wear cone-shaped hats. No, they're not magicians, that's probably different.

No, please don't be a witch yourself.

"Why not!" Stiles looks personally offended, like Derek asking him not to be a grubby witch is somehow a dig at his abilities to serve the pack or fight or something. He even stops walking, refuses to continue. Derek can't investigate this witch without Stiles. He squares his shoulders, annoyed, and doubles back to glare straight into Stiles' moonlit face.

"Witches are filthy. They always stink of the small animals they've killed for their blood, and of food they've let go rancid. Also? They hate werewolves, and I hate them."

"You don't want to have to hate me any more than you already do," Stiles says, lips twitching into a half smile. "Got it." Derek wrenches his gaze up from Stiles' lips to his eyes. It doesn't help his thoughts lurch forward any quicker. He has to remind himself to nod, so that he doesn't just stand there and puzzle over Stiles.

One time, Derek was stuck tracking an unknown menace of an alpha right on the heels of the untimely murder of his big sister, and ironically enough, his newfound fellow beta was at school playing a silly game with nets on sticks, while his human friend was with Derek in a beat-up blue Jeep. Derek watched as Stiles told Scott over the phone to tell his father he'd be late. "You're not going to make it," Derek told him, brow furrowed.

"I know," Stiles replied firmly.

Stiles doesn't act like a teenager sometimes. Just every once in a while, he acts like something else, something bigger. It's enough that Derek often finds himself considering Stiles with an intense feeling of confoundment. Or awe. Stiles' jaw is set.  His eyes wondering.

Derek stops looking at him.

The moon was big and orange when they started out, and now it's much smaller, and paler. It's almost midnight; they should hurry.

"One more thing," Derek says, moving on. Stiles sticks what's left of his bread into his basket and follows. "If I tell you to run, run. No matter what."

::

Stiles doesn't run.

Of course he doesn't. Derek should have guessed that when he issued a direct command, Stiles would blatantly ignore it and make a pop culture reference while he did so. It doesn't make him any less infuriated when it happens. The witch traps Derek, molasses: episode II. She grins at him, and pulls a sprig of wolfs bane from her hair. Derek's experiencing a surge of childlike panic when Stiles brains the witch with his lacrosse stick. Juts it into her skull like a spear.

It doesn't knock her out. Growling, she tosses a fistful of some kind of weird, awful-smelling dust on the both of them and charges off like her ass is on fire. Derek is wondering briefly if it's the same witch he encountered as a kid when suddenly his senses hone in on Stiles, hard. He can _taste_ the shape of Stiles, three feet away from him, can _feel_ the heat wafting off his flesh.

"What—" Stiles cuts himself off to sneeze so hard he drops the lacrosse stick. "What was _that_ shit?"

Derek can feel his eyes flashing. He hates it. He edges, with excruciating effort, closer to Stiles. Seeing his struggles, Stiles takes a step closer. Eyes wide, and watering from the dust. Lashes clumped together in moisture. As he eyes Derek, his eyelids lower slightly, and he stares, bites his lip. His knees wobble, and he topples forward and hits the dirt. His scent hits Derek like a wrecking ball.

Derek falls down, too, palms positively _itching_ to touch him, to grip him tight. Press him into the dirt and _own him_. "S-Stiles," he grits out. "You need to leave. Or get away."

"You already said that earlier," Stiles says huskily, awkwardly maneuvering himself on his knees towards Derek, hands outstretched. "Derek."

"I mean it, Stiles," Derek pleads. "I can't—"

"You smell _really good_ ," Stiles rasps. Eyes dilated.

"Th-that's." Derek should find the situation even more dire when he realises Stiles is affected, too, but really the way he's looking at him, leaning in his general direction, able to smell him from this distance, just makes Derek suppress a predatory grin.

"Like," Stiles says, "like forest—trees, and g-gasoline, sleep—"

Stiles' long fingers fist in Derek's jacket, and Derek lurches forward and kisses him. Teeth bumping together, Stiles' tongue in his mouth. Stiles groans roughly, his hands everywhere, under Derek's jacket, pushing his shirt up on one side. Derek is helpless, so it's up to Stiles to wrench them apart, panting. Derek attacks Stiles' neck, and Stiles whimpers. "Derek. What was that stuff?"

Derek would like to say, "I don't know," tries to say, "something dangerous," wants to say, "you need to stop, if you can," needs to say, "I think I wanted this before now," but all he can manage is a desperate, ragged moan.

Stiles shoves Derek by the shoulders, making him fall back onto his ass, and then straddles his lap, reaching with an unprecedented determination for Derek's belt. "Stiles," Derek scrounges up.

"J-jesus christ," Stiles gasps. "It's like I have about two percent of my typical self-control. Which, for me, is s- _seriously_ saying something." He runs his tongue along Derek's lips, and then leans back a bit to unzip his hoodie. "I think that stuff was some kind of—witchy aphrodisiac fuckery." His eyes dart up to Derek's face, gleaming. "Maybe it was the first stuff she could—" he gets Derek's dick out, and Derek feels his whole body flush a shade redder "—g-get her hands on…"

"Stiles," Derek growls again, molars clenched hard enough that he's going to have a headache later on. Once the frantic buzz wears off.

Derek wanted Kate so bad he couldn't see straight. He was too naïve to really know the difference between infatuation—lust, more like—and love, so he gave everything to her. He was just a kid. He was just a _teenager_. _Stiles_ is a teenager. Whether Derek wants him—which, apparently he does, but maybe it's just the _witchy aphrodisiac fuckery_ —is irrelevant.

"Goddamn," Stiles sighs when he gets his own jeans undone.

Derek grips Stiles' hips against his own will when Stiles presses their dicks together, the heat of him, the friction making them hiss, making Derek lick hungrily at a smudge of bruise on Stiles' throat.

"Right after the—the pool thing? I-I was pretty stressed out—" Stiles huffs a mostly mirthless laugh, and they both groan as he jerks his hand. "But I dreamed about it a bunch of times after. _Vividly_. Sometimes you weren't paralyzed. W-we were just. I don't know. In the pool for kicks, who cares. You fucked me." He gulps, licks his own lips. Eyes rolling back, mouth opening. "Again and ag—ain, with your fangs all—god fucking—I. W-woke up, when. When I jerked myself, I, I'd never _been_ so hard—"

Stiles stops talking, then. Words abandoned for favour of grunting and swearing softly. Frenzied jerking motions, biting kisses. Stiles' tongue on Derek's canines, Derek at his mercy. Which—he can't entirely bring himself to mind, right now. He's so wrapped up in Stiles' smell so close, his voice whispering Derek's name, his touch firm and dear, that he doesn't know he's going to come until it's happening. "Shit," he bites, spilling all over Stiles' hands, their clothes. Comes so hard his back hurts tensing. Sags, and it's all he can do not to just flop over in the dirt. Bathe in their scents together. Stiles pushes his head forward, brushes his lips against Derek's throat. Derek drops his forehead onto Stiles' shoulder.

They sit there, panting, the come cooling and getting gross, and Derek feels his thoughts start to settle, slowly. "Did we just come at the _same time_?" Stiles wonders, voice sounding coarse and deadened. It cracks into a higher register when he laughs. "This is the stuff of fanfictions, dude, I think we might be made for each other."

"Shit," Derek says. He doesn't sound nearly as rugged as he generally tries for. He sounds soft and terrified.

"You still affected by the—the fuckdust?" Stiles asks breathlessly. "D'you want me to—" His eyes flick back down to Derek's dick.

"No," Derek snaps, shoving himself back into his pants. "No, I don't need you to—n-no, I'm not still—fucking _hell_ , Stiles. You're—you're—what're you—s-six _teen_?"

_"How old are you?" Kate purred, her hair brushing Derek's face, and Derek felt himself blush so hard his feet felt cold._

_"F-fifteen."_

_Kate giggled, and her laugh was like shattering glass. "Still just a pup," she said, her eyes glittering like obsidian and her_

"No, I'm—" Stiles narrows his eyes. "Did you seriously forget how old I am? Your mind is so full of frowning that you can't remember my age."

"I don't frown that oft—S- _Stiles_." Derek rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes, shuddering.

_"How could you fall for it?" Laura asked baldly, nose ruddy and cheeks wet. "She's twenty-five, what could she want with someone as young as you? How could—?" They're dead, all of them, all_

"Derek?"

Derek shakes his head. _He had never associated fear with pleasure, when he touched himself, alone in his room, prepubescent fantasies, but now it was Kate touching him, and it felt so good he was frightened_ he shuts down, terribly cold like ice and he can't leave, can't get away and gather his thoughts because of the lingering effects of the spell _she was more built than he was, stronger, and it was scary but she was human, not like his family, and this was good, or it was bad and her body was something like he'd never known before and she hissed something nasty and his face felt like it was torn between flooding red and blanching stark and she pinned him down and he gasped_ Stiles hugs Derek, an arm around his shoulders, the other on his head, holding him to his chest. Derek instinctively shrinks away from it, but Stiles holds him fast.

It took Derek four years to tell Laura. Not about what he'd done—fucked a huntress, gave her all the information she'd need to ruin, to ruin—she knew about that—but about what Kate had done. Derek never felt like _he'd_ fucked _her_ , he felt like _she'd_ fucked _him_. Her ghost hands were all over him for years, making him nauseated, until he learned to block it out. Came back when he touched Erica in the hospital, came back when she launched herself at him and put her _mouth_ on him—his hands go ice cold at the thought of what Erica must think of him. He swore to Laura he'd never do it again. Never love, never the rest of it, ever again. Laura tried to hug him, but he jerked away from her, ran from their apartment, ended up on a park bench six miles away, hugging his knees to his chest. Derek and Laura were never very close growing up. She was all he had anymore, but he couldn't _dead, they're all dead, Derek, what do we do, while Derek just stood gaping and reeking of Kate—_

"It's okay," Stiles says, ungently, like he's making a point, like he's telling a crucial truth. "Breathe, Derek." Derek takes his hands away from his face, and Stiles is still holding him. "It doesn't seem like it now, but it will be okay. As long as you just breathe."

_"But why," Laura wondered, staring dead-eyed across the motel room, Derek wrapped too tight in the blankets beside her, blankets that smelled blessedly of anyone but Kate Argent and of anything but fire. "I can't, not without Mom. Not without."_

"It's cool, dude. We'll just sit here, and, and you breathe. Just sit and breathe."

::

Derek breathes.

"So," Stiles clears his throat. "We'll obviously go after the witch again. I could, um, ask Deaton about the stuff she used. See if there's some kind of antidote, so it doesn't happen again. That way."

They're at Stiles' house, and Derek is wearing warm, come-free clothing (thanks to Stiles), and he has a hot mug of tea in his hands. Derek meekly eyes Stiles, who is dipping a teabag repeatedly in his own mug and watching him. Derek blushes.

"Are you okay?" Stiles asks, voice low.

Derek nods once, tightly.

"It's no big deal," Stiles tells him, feigned blasé attitude given away by the mild nerves Derek can scent, can see in the slight twitch of Stiles' fingers. "I used to get panic attacks all the time after my mom died."  

"You're just so _young_ ," Derek bursts out, words cracking. Staring crazily at a stain in the tablecloth. Gripping the mug tightly. "And I know you're giving me that _look_ again, but you _are_ young. You're." Derek snaps his mouth shut.

"Breathe," Stiles commands again.

Derek breathes.

"This is definitely not something you need to feel guilty about. First of all, it was the stuff. The—chocolate cherry oyster dust." Derek feels his lips quirk up a bit. "And also," Stiles goes on, "I'm gonna be up front with you and tell you that it didn't _make me_ want what happened. I already wanted it. Because you have an awesome streak. That just gets hidden under your _creepy_ streak, occasionally. So the dust didn't make me want you. It just kind of—made me unable to stop. I still want it. But only when you're okay."

Derek is not by any stretch of the imagination okay. "I'm okay."

Stiles doesn't even pause. "No, you're not."

Derek does. He feels tight in the chest—not because he's wearing Stiles' shirt. He looks back at Stiles, who raises his eyebrows. "I'm not okay."

Wordlessly for once, Stiles puts a hand, warm and sure, on Derek's wrist. Derek doesn't even know he's shaking until Stiles makes it stop. It's intoxicating.

Derek breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's important that you know that Stiles is being always baldly honest with Derek in this. Stiles was into Derek before this happened; the sex pollen just made them horny and impulsive; but consent is sort of muddy here, so I put a warning on it. 
> 
> Derek is wearing the striped t-shirt again. You know the one. 
> 
> Also, Stiles and Scott do climb into each other's windows a lot, but I feel like they text each other first. Today, Derek just showed the fuck up. Nice job, Der.


	7. April

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something weird and dreamlike about seeing the kitchen built again.

One of Derek's favourite memories is of the morning after a full moon. It soothes him. It was even his anchor, before. In the memory, he must be around four or so. He's dozing off in the arms of his favourite aunt, Darcy, who he was named for. She is telling him a story in a low voice. Sometimes when Derek remembers it, he focuses on the texture of her sweater against his cheek, the trust he has in her arms, one under his knees and one under his shoulders. Sometimes when he remembers, her voice is melodic and it carries him like a tide. Sometimes the smell of browning meat for lunch and beer, yeasty and lukewarm in his uncle's glass, and soap subdued on Aunt Darcy's skin enveloping him in a feeling of overwhelming safety. He never remembers what was going on in the house, because he was four, and he didn't give a shit. He focuses on the small things, the minute details. Sometimes he can't even remember what the story was unless he's falling asleep.

Derek glances around himself. The kitchen is a mess. A half-eaten cake is going stale on the counter, there's confetti everywhere, and taped across all the appliances is a banner, handmade by Scott and Erica, which reads Happy Birthday Stiles. Stiles is at the table beside Derek, still wearing a plastic tiara, in the midst of a sugar crash.

Despite the mess, the kitchen's pretty homey—a word that hasn't been an accurate descriptor for the Hale house in a long time. It's furnished with mismatched chairs, a hand-me-down tablecloth thrown over the Hale dining room table, which Stiles and Scott fixed with wood glue and duct tape. There are even three different kinds of cereal in here. Including Cheerios. Milk in the fridge. A Reyes cookbook, propped up between a cookie jar from Boyd's house and an electric kettle, paid for with Jackson's credit card. Whether Jackson actually elected to purchase it or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, Stiles makes instant coffee with it regularly.

The kitchen isn't the same as it was when the Hales lived here, when it was full of clinking dishes and arguing children and laughing men and Aunt Darcy's voice, deep and serious, _Once there was a wolf who fell in love with a human…_

"So I told my dad this morning," Stiles offers up lethargically.

"Told him what?" Derek asks around a mouthful of cold pizza.

Stiles gives him a Look. "That I voted for Romney. What do you think, dumbass? About _werewolves_."  

Derek cocks an eyebrow, and Stiles mimics him peevishly over the coffee mug from which he's drinking mostly flat Pepsi. "How'd he take it?"

"Surprisingly well," Stiles says, putting the cap back on a bottle of ranch sauce and then holding the bottle in his hands. "He sat there quietly while Scott did glowy-eyes at him, drank an ounce or four of whiskey, figured out half the crimes from the last year were of supernatural significance, and then forbade me from taking the Bite."

_The human loved the wolf, and came every day to see him. He told his father he was hunting the wolf, so no one could know._ Derek's fingers curled in Aunt Darcy's sweater. He sucked his thumb.

"Sounds reasonable." Derek takes a sip from Stiles' mug of soda. "I once had a cousin who was dating a human. When she found out he was a werewolf, she yelled at him for two hours and then stormed off in his car."

Stiles winces sympathetically. "She give it back?"

"Eventually," Derek says. "They were just starting to reconcile when… the fire happened." Derek remembers vaguely his family discussing it behind his cousin's back. The general consensus was that it wasn't going to work out, that she was going to split. Only Aunt Darcy was confident things would work out.

_The human's father found out, and they trapped the wolf with a rope. Together they led the wolf back to their home. The human snuck out that night to see the wolf. He cried and said they couldn't see each other, a human and a wolf. He let the wolf go, and the wolf ran._

Derek saw his cousin's ex in the street once last year. She didn't recognise him. She had a kid, about six or seven. Derek doesn't even want to think about if that kid's kin. If he's like Derek.

Aunt Darcy insisted, "People change for love. That's why we exist." Aunt Darcy was pretty nuts. Derek was nuts about her.

_The wolf made a deal with the moon. The moon made him human, as long as he changed back for the moon, whenever she wanted._

"That isn't all I told Dad," Stiles says. He has a knack for changing the subject right when Derek needs him to; doesn't even mind the lack of segue.

"No?" Derek chews on pizza crust.

He looks at Derek sideways, wrinkles his nose. "Also told him I had a thing for the alpha."

Derek starts coughing violently. 

_The wolf turned into a man, and he and the human were married._

"You telling Derek your distorted version of _Peter and the Wolf_ again, Darcy?" asked Uncle Dale. "Poor kid's trying to get some shut-eye."

"Der-wolf likes my stories. He believes in love! Don't you, sugar?" Aunt Darcy squeezed Derek to herself like a bundle of blankets, jiggled him, and he gave a thin whine that made her chuckle, deep and warm in her chest, pressed up against his ear.  

"He took that worse, really, but he didn't, like, lock me in a tower or anything," Stiles says, his cup at his smile. Eyes relaxed, looking at some point out of the room, out of the house. Knees bouncing with surplus energy. "So I think we're good to go."

Derek _probably_ believes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Stiles is legal. 
> 
> Wereytales are my shit.


	8. May

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek takes a leap.

Derek's first kiss happened at school. He was in kindergarten, and he was roped into playing House with some girls on the playground. He went with it, because he had an overabundance of sisters at home and it's what he was used to. "You're the mommy," he was told; "I'm the daddy." Derek shrugged, and accepted the baby, which was a stuffed Zubat with pipe cleaners wrapped around its legs. "I'm going to work. We have to kiss," said the daddy. Derek shrugged again. She kissed him. He grimaced, and then sat in the kitchen (an anthill under a tree) and wiped his mouth on the baby. Kissing was gross, he decided.

Stiles sighs happily as Derek kisses him, despite the steady rain they're outside in. He's warmth and firm comfort in Derek's arms, fingers tangling up in his hair. "Mm, you're pretty good at this in spite of everything," Stiles says, whatever that means, "but I'm probably better."

"According to what data," Derek demands, hoping that a confident voice will distract from the mild panic that sent his hands shaking, the bright flush that pops up in his face, the general out-of-his-element-ness that happens whenever Stiles gets particularly cozy with him. Which is to say, whenever he so much as _looks_ at him.

Derek and his siblings used to go to the school on Sunday afternoons to play on the playground. Derek used to tag along after Laura and Cora, because they were the sisters closest to his age. One day they raced to the swings. "The swings are the best part of the playground," Laura said eagerly when she beat him to the swing with the slightly shorter chains. "Second place is the merry-go-round, but the merry-go-round still isn't as great."

"What's so great about _swinging_ ," Derek grumped, kicking and trying to swing as high as she and Cora could. They soared above him. Eclipsed the sun.

Laura grinned, manic. "Well, when else do you _fly_?" she cried exhilarantly, and leapt off with her eyes shut. Tried to tumble in the air, her hair flying like fire.

Derek couldn't swing like Laura. He couldn't take the leap. He sat on the swing and pouted. Watched her land in the soft grass.

"There isn't any evidence to support it," says Stiles, "since you won't compliment me without immediately drifting away into the night, and no one else has ever bothered to conduct an experiment."

"No one?"

"Not since Scott. We were sad and thirteen. We don't discuss it. It's fine: I'm still confident I'm a fantastic kisser."

"You are," Derek confirms.

Stiles blinks at him, smiles tentatively. Derek blinks back, and then abruptly turns and starts to walk away. "Wait! Where are you going, what're you—?" Stiles calls, hopping along after him and grabbing his sleeve.

"Drifting off into the night," Derek says flatly.

Stiles grins toothily and Derek dips in to kiss him again. Thunder booms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shitty first kiss stories are my favourite. 
> 
> Stiles was spinning an empty Gatorade bottle on the table at lunch in middle school, and their friend Harley announced, "Spin the bottle!" in the hopes of getting to kiss Scott. But the table was uneven, and Stiles got to kiss Scott. Twice. 
> 
> Then the bell rang.


	9. June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you to hum 'I'm comin' out' the entire time you're reading this.

There's something stupid and romantic about keeping this whole thing a secret. The sheriff doesn't often ask pertinent questions about Stiles' love life, and Derek doesn't have any figures of authority to answer to or keep secrets from, so mainly they're just sneaking around the pack, Stiles' friends, and Derek's own fears, insecurities.

When Derek was in the second or third grade, he and two friends formed a club from which girls were strictly banned. It was very _Get Rid Of Slimy girlS_ ; there were paper hats and everything. The club was a secret, as if three little boys having a gender-discriminatory club was breaking news or something. Derek, Dean, and Justin thought it was. Perhaps it's just the thrill of having something private that you share with someone else. There can't be any other reason. There's no purpose to it, Derek thinks.

"Maybe it's easier that way, though," Stiles says, at Derek's stove. He's two feet away from it, tossing uneven chunks of raw potato into a pan of boiling vegetable oil. It's terribly unsafe, and it sort of smells, but Stiles likes things that are dangerous, stupid wastes of time. Perhaps, Derek thinks, that's why he's with Derek. "This way, we don't have to explain anything. We don't have to weather Erica's Spanish Inquisition about what we're doing in the bedroom." Not that they're doing much of anything in the bedroom. "Remember when Isaac took Allison out on his birthday?" Stiles snorts, shakes his head, aims a chunk of potato like a basketball. "It was pretty wild watching Erica play the Bender to Isaac's Claire. Thought he was gonna cry when she asked him if Allison let him knot her." _Plunk_ goes the potato chunk, followed by the sizzling of it cooking and hot oil hitting the stove.

They could probably be trying harder at keeping the whole thing a secret. In all honesty, things haven't changed much, so there isn't much to hide. When Derek started seeing Kate, _"Get in the car, sweetie, we're going for a_ ride _," Kate said with an avaricious grin_ everything changed. Derek showered differently, spoke differently, thought differently. Kate went straight from coy flirting to a monstrous expression while she—Stiles flings another chunk of potato, and swears loudly as a drop of oil hits his bare arm. Jolts backward.

"Maybe you should stop _doing_ that," Derek says, irritated, while Stiles nurses his miniscule burn and looks close to tears.

"Maybe _you_ should stop being a _werewolf_ ," Stiles retorts in a strangled voice.

"Are you comparing genetic lycanthropy to throwing things at hot oil?"

Stiles snorts. "Shut up and fix it, asshole."

Ten minutes later, the stove is off, the hunks of arguably cooked potato are salted and sitting on a plate, forgotten. Stiles is sitting on the counter, a band-aid on his arm. Not that he remembers that he hurt himself to begin with, because he and Derek are making out, Derek standing between his knees and hooking his fingers in Stiles' belt loops. Getting up on his toes. Stiles' palm scraping on Derek's stubble, his left hand on Derek's waist. Something like joy curls up from the soles of Derek's feet straight up through his skull.

Derek never told his family about seeing an Argent because both of his parents hated the Argents with everything in them. For a time, he fancied his backseat liaisons with Kate comparable in some facet to another, better-known tale of star-crossed, feud-cockblocked lovers, but it's important to know that at fifteen, Derek had never read _Romeo and Juliet._ Or seen _West Side Story_. Nor had he ever thought to put any credence in the side-eyeing of the Argents that went down en masse at family holidays.

It was Derek's father's opinion that what the kids didn't know, wouldn't hurt them, and Derek had unwittingly picked up that attitude by osmosis. While Dad was keeping his lips zipped about all the things the Argents had done when he was a teenager, Derek was returning the favour about all the things Kate did while Derek was a teenager.

Not that Kate had ever fostered a sense of emotional availability, in their relationship. Even if the vendetta didn't exist, Derek wouldn't have felt comfortable talking about her. She made it very clear, all the time, that what happened in Kate's car damn well stayed in Kate's car. (Kate drove a VW bug, and Derek can't stand VW bugs.)

Derek decides he doesn't particularly like keeping Stiles a secret. But if it's what Stiles wants…  

Stiles crosses his ankles behind Derek, seemingly content to spend the rest of his life kissing a werewolf in a kitchen that smells too strongly of singed potato.

When Jackson bursts into the kitchen ten seconds later, Stiles is dazed, sitting on the counter and blinking (his lips are red as sin), and Derek is standing by the stove, chewing on one of Stiles' perilously homemade fries. It's—it could be worse.

"Some bitch has Danny," Jackson grits out.

Stiles' eyes narrow immediately. "Let me get my basket."

::

"Release me!" says the witch.

This time she isn't really in a position of power over anyone: Stiles quickly figured out how to trap her with iron and salt. So she seems to be snarling and insulting them from her prison. His classmate Danny is there, rescued from the witch's clutches, Jackson with possessive claws tangled in Danny's sweatshirt.

Danny's looking ashen and out of his element, but to his credit, he has an expression one might get if there were a pop quiz and he hadn't done the reading, as opposed to if he'd been kidnapped and saved by two different creatures he hadn't known existed. He might make a good wolf, if Derek wasn't already overloaded with teenagers all up in his shit.

"Oh, it's wolfy again," the witch says, eyes gleaming, when she recognises Derek. She's sitting in a circle in the dirt, unkempt fingernails grimy, hair a knotted mess. "Come to get a little more _freedom_?" she goads, leering between Derek and Stiles.

"I'm a United States citizen," Stiles says as he digs in his picnic basket for a primordial-looking tome. "I have all the freedom in the world. Except for a few crucial parts. But we're working on it. Brobama, and all that."

"Freedom from your _inhibitions_ ," the witch goes on. "Did you like my dust? I've seen that it breached a few boundaries for you two."

Derek feels his face reddening. He just clenches his fists.

"Sexually," clarifies the witch.

"I have literally no idea what you're talking about," Stiles says conversationally, flipping through pages of the hardback. "Literally. I have _no_ ideas. I can't even make any comically false suggestions, because I don't have any of those, because I have literally _not one_ idea what you're talking about."

"I was talking about how the two of you—"

Stiles cuts her off when he loudly starts to read from the books, incantations in some foreign language that Derek doesn't know anything about, and the witch leaps to her feet, but can't leave the circle. "There are others," she shouts. "You won't get away with this." Stiles just reads louder. She shudders, hits the dirt. When Stiles finishes reading, the witch isn't more than a sullen-looking, unhygienic deceased woman.

"She's dead," Danny says, voice slightly betraying his fear.

"Yeah," Stiles says. Grimaces. "Good riddance. She smelled like old lady and roadkill."

They stand around for a minute or two while Stiles puts things back into his basket. Every minute, she has shrunk away slightly more; she'll have vanished entirely within an hour and a half. If anything, she smells worse stripped of her magic. Derek moves away from her.

"What was she talking about?" Danny asks eventually. "With the inhibitions."

"Didn't you hear a word I said?" Stiles exclaims. "No ideas! Literally!"

"It seemed like she was implying something about you and Miguel." Derek wants to fall off a cliff. _Miguel_. Christ. "Sexually," clarifies Danny.

"Miguel?" Jackson snaps. "Miguel."

Stiles looks terribly sheepish. "Derek is also my cousin, Miguel." He glances at Danny, shoulders hunched, gripping the handles of the basket with both hands. "Sorry, Danny."

"I figured out he was Derek Hale when I saw his picture in the paper last year," Danny says. "Not that I ever believed he was your cousin." Stiles blinks at him, like he can't even fathom someone not falling for his silver-tongued lies. Derek snickers. Danny adds, "I'm still calling him Miguel."

"Mi _guel_ ," Jackson says.

"Are you guys going out?" Danny asks.

"Totally," Stiles says. "Going out of our minds!" He guffaws, slaps his knee. Danny doesn't even crack a smile. He just raises a pointed eyebrow and stares, so Stiles adds a feeble, "Uh, nope. Why would you ask me that question?"  

Jackson shakes his head. "Miguel."

"Well, you guys have fun not going out," Danny says, and he and Jackson turn to walk away, towards Jackson's Porsche. "See you, Stiles. Later, Miguel."

Stiles stands there, perplexed and covered in smears of blood and dirt and sweat. Holding his backpack like a shield. "He was bluffing," he says to himself.

"M'kay," Derek replies. They leave the forest, the witch quickly disappearing in their wake.

::

"So," Stiles says lethargically, voice sounding tinny over the sound of rushing water. "Am I a really bad liar?"

Derek chuckles. He pulls back the shower curtain to look at Stiles sitting on the toilet seat, in pajamas, mismatched socks, with a towel slung around his neck. He's drying one ear with it. "Yes," Derek says. He closes the curtain and starts to wash his hair.

Stiles sighs. "Guess I always hoped it was just the fact that my dad caught liars for a _living_ that I never got away with anything. I don't really like lying."

"I know you don't," Derek says, rinsing. The water pressure is fleeting, but the temperature is perfect, just this side of scalding, so Derek stands under the occasionally dribbling, occasionally firehose-powered stream, and sighs.

"You know I don't?" Stiles huffs a laugh. "How?"

Derek smirks to himself. Sometimes Stiles forgets what Derek thinks of him, and how often. "The time you had me arrested…" He pauses here to let Stiles feel a little guilty. "…your father asked you what you were doing out by my house, and you told an impressively bad lie. So he asked you if you were lying, and you redefined the word 'lying' so he would just give up."

There's a pause, in which Derek can picture Stiles smirking sheepishly. "I had no idea you were listening to me."  

Derek mumbles into the spray of the water, "I'm usually listening to you." Even, for all intents and purposes, submerged like this, Derek can scent the intense, unadulterated _want_ coming off of Stiles suddenly, and he covers his face with his hands. Knows that if he went to touch him, invited him into the shower like he wants, he'd just be plagued by memories of Kate. " _I just really like you," Derek said nervously, and Kate grinned spitefully and said, "Of course you do, sweetheart."_ It fills him with boiling detestation. "I loathe her," he says before he can stop himself.

He expects Stiles to be confused. Caught off guard. Any normal kid would be; but Stiles isn't a normal kid. "Hey, ditto," says Stiles promptly. "But—and I don't know if this will raise your spirits, but it makes _me_ feel all sparkly inside—your uncle snapped her neck and tore her throat out. Whole nine yards. Scott says Peter made her _apologise_ first. In front of _Allison_."

Derek shudders, goes to turn up the heat. It's already as high as it will go. "She's dead," he says, mostly to himself. In all honesty, he forgets sometimes.

"She's dead," agrees Stiles jauntily. "Ding dong, etcetera."

Derek smirks. Gives up and turns off the shower. As usual, he's oddly placated by Stiles' derision. He reaches out of the shower and paws blindly for a towel. There isn't one, but Stiles puts one into his hand. "Thanks," he says meekly, pulling it in and scrubbing himself with it.

"It appealed to me to keep us a, a _secret_ ," Stiles says lightly. "It sounded nice. Secret, forbidden romance, and so on. But since I'm so terrible at it, _and_ since we loathe Kate Argent, maybe we should just—give up?"

Derek pulls the curtain open, towel around his waist. Frowns. "Give up."

"On keeping our smooches on the down-low." Stiles stands, looks hesitant about getting too close to Derek, who is still dripping, and then shrugs. He presses up against him, fingers tugging at his hips, effectively soaking his t-shirt. "It isn't as if we're ashamed or anything, right?"

"Sure," Derek says, smiling softly. "But you're still in high school."

"Not at this moment. Right now I'm in the bathroom, in the arms of a terrifying werewolf."

"Stiles," Derek says, not even bothering to suppress his grin, "you still live with your father, the sheriff."

"Bah." Stiles rolls his eyes. "Details." Derek raises his eyebrows dubiously; Stiles ignores him. "So we won't send out, like, embossed announcements or anything. But no more lying."

"No more lying," Derek agrees.

"And on that note," says Stiles decisively, "smooches. Now, please."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can stop humming now. I made fries like this once in my brother's apartment. They were not good. 
> 
> Shame the witch had to die. I like her; everything that she says and does is a result of her social inabilities.


	10. July

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek would say he doesn't like summertime, but he doesn't like any time. Until now, anyway.

"My brother was a dick when we were kids," Derek says. "He used to steal candy from the kitchen and leave the wrappers in my room."

Stiles chuckles, combs his fingers through Derek's hair. "You never got him back?"

"I couldn't. He was five years older than I was, and my sisters were loyal to him. He knew about everything I did before _I_ did."

There are two different fans pointed at them. Derek's shirt is off; Stiles is wearing nothing but his boxers. They might be slightly cooler if Derek wasn't laying in Stiles' lap, but Stiles' touch is relaxing him more than a comfortable temperature would. Some Lord of the Rings nonsense is playing on Stiles' laptop. Derek has never paid attention to Lord of the Rings, and he certainly isn't going to start now.

When Derek was in the 5th grade, he and his friends made pacts against shit like Star Trek and N'SYNC (his friend called them Fart Trek and N'Stink, because 5th graders are poets), and Stiles has him breaking these pacts on a pretty regular basis. Pacts. Derek doesn't have any pacts against Lord of the Rings, and Stiles couldn't get Derek to watch them if he paid him.

"One time, he socked me in the eye, so I hit him back, just in time for my mom to turn around. I got in trouble."

Stiles laughs at that, harder than he should. "Aw," he coos sardonically, "poor Der-bear."

"Yeah," Derek says vehemently, lifting his head to glare. "Poor me." Stiles pushes him back down with a palm to the forehead. Derek lets it happen.

Derek and Laura never reminisced about their childhood. If Derek ever mentioned their siblings, her face would crumple, the rickety scaffolding with which she was holding herself together would simply collapse in on itself. Derek knew from her expression, her temperament, the one time she brought up their parents, that Derek had a similar reaction. Laura's method seemed to be to rush ahead of their memories, leave them in the ashes, and simply build new ones. Like a phoenix. Derek's thought process while he was numbly stumbling along in her wake was, _but phoenixes aren't real_.

When Derek mistakenly protested that ghosts weren't real, Stiles lifted one finger sagely. "That’s what everyone says about werewolves. And _yet_."

"I never had anyone growing up," Stiles says. He sounds so tranquil, so _serene_ , Derek can't help but sigh and lean into his touch. "Didn't have many friends. I was always kinda weird."

"I'm beside myself with shock," Derek mumbles.

"You're beside yourself with shut the hell up," Stiles replies.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"I was also kind of weird-looking," Stiles says instead of engaging him further. "One time this friend of mine saw a photo of me from a few years prior, and was like, 'Who's she?' And I was way too embarrassed to correct him, so I told him it was my sister."

Derek covers his mouth, bites his palm, like this will make him laugh less. Cringes, knees up, so that he doesn't simply burst into guffaws.

"Somewhere in Beacon Hills High is a guy who thinks I have a sister in Chicago named Stella," Stiles says solemnly.

"I want to meet her someday," Derek tells Stiles, still jolting with laughter. Stiles shoves him off his lap. Derek rolls under the coffee table.

::

Derek is Stiles' unceremonious plus-one to Scott's birthday party. The entire pack, minus Derek, was invited. Scott doesn't have many friends outside the pack, since Jackson told everyone on the lacrosse team that Scott and Stiles kidnapped him (ironically enough, Jackson was invited), so it actually takes everyone a good couple hours before someone clocks Derek's unexpected presence.

"Wait. Scott invited _you_?" Boyd asks Derek, not unkindly.

Derek smirks at him from over his plastic cup full of Kool-Aid. Scott should have anticipated that letting Stiles organise his eighteenth birthday party would result in Stiles organising his eighth birthday party. Everything has ladybugs on it. He even got the plastic tablecloth and vinyl _Happy 8th Birthday_ banner—with a 1 marked conspicuously in front of the 8 in sharpie. "Of course not," he says. "Stiles did."

Boyd nods knowingly. "That's what I figured."

They stand side-by-side, apart from the action, as Scott opens up the present from Erica—a large, purple, silicone vibrator—and turns green. Stiles topples out of his chair laughing, hits the floor with a sick thud, and doesn't stop cracking up. Derek grins, watching him. Wondering when stupidity stopped being stupid and started being—he doesn't know what, exactly. Entertaining? Relatable? Endearing?

"You and Stiles have been pretty friendly lately," Boyd says. Clearly prompting Derek to explain.

"Yeah," Derek says, hoping his voice doesn't sound too raw. He doesn't elaborate.

Boyd doesn't pry. "It's cool that you're friends," he says. "Erica was worried you were lonely."

_Erica_ was worried. "Me or him?"

"Both of you."

Derek blushes wildly. He's never talked about emotions with Boyd. And it's not because he doesn't like Boyd, it's because Derek is _Derek_. He can hardly stand talking about his emotions with _Stiles_ , who is personally and vehemently interested in Derek's emotions. Meanwhile, Boyd the undaunted fears no conversation topic. Derek has never seen Boyd panic, blush, get nervous, even sweat. When things get dire in battle, Boyd just gets more determined, mouth set in a grim, stony expression. "I've seen a lot," Boyd said when Scott commented on his level-headedness, bewildered. "Not much shocks me anymore." Derek always knew Boyd was thoroughly unconcerned in general, _particularly_ about romance, but he never thought that apathy would translate into him embarrassing Derek at a ladybug-themed birthday party. He shuffles his feet.

"She always said you two'd find each other," adds Boyd, abruptly derailing Derek's mortification-fueled train of thought. Derek blinks at him emptily. Boyd explains, "Erica."

"Oh. Yeah."

And, "Are you two gonna stand there jacking each other off all day, or are you gonna come eat some ladybug cake?" speak of the devil, and she shall appear.

Isaac dares Scott to put his vibrator into his cake and turn it on. It's anticlimactic, but Erica _cries_ she laughs so hard.

While this is going on, Stiles drags Derek into the bathroom and licks frosting off his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me, or does Erica strike you as the type to say vulgar things just because they're vulgar?


	11. August

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek takes another step in ditching Kate.

"Why are you so pissed off?" Stiles asks. Fingers tapping excess energy out on the steering wheel of the Jeep.

"I'm not pissed off," Derek snaps.

Stiles gives a rough, humourless bark of laugher. "No, you're right. You're a ball of yarn covered in kisses and sunshine."

"Shut up, Stiles."

"Seriously, Derek, what _is_ this?"

You'd think, since Kate was only sleeping with Derek to get information, she'd do anything he wanted to get the information as fast as possible. But Kate was never one for doing things the quick and easy way. Kate liked to do things the fun way, and her idea of fun was abusing rabid werewolves. As Stiles has made it profusely clear in the last couple months, even disregarding her intentions, the age difference, and the outcome, Derek and Kate were—to say the least, _unhealthy_. Derek is fucked up. He's also angry.

"I'm frustrated," he grates out.

"Yeah—I can see that," says Stiles. " _Talk_ to me."

" _No_ , I mean I'm—I want—" Derek flexes his fingers. "Never mind."

"Don't 'never mind' me, Derek. Just say it."

"I want _you_ ," Derek bursts out.

Stiles doesn't reply. Derek gets flustered, but when he looks at him, his face is soft.

"I _want_ you. But I—it makes me—it reminds me—"

"Of her," Stiles says.

Derek gets inexplicably livid when Stiles says that, even though that is precisely what he meant. He breathes heavily for a moment, and then sighs. Lets go of the anger, and then all that's left is this overwhelming _sadness_. "I don't want you to think I don't want to," Derek mumbles, folding his hands together. He frowns. "Or that I didn't want it—that one time."

"I know," Stiles says. He scoots closer to Derek, leans on him. Derek is instantly calm, peaceful, as abruptly and completely as if someone doused him in some kind of liquid sedative.

"I thought about it a lot," Derek goes on almost lethargically. "Still do. A _lot_. Just—I don't know. I've been. Afraid to." He shrugs. "Say it."

"We could try. If you wanted." Stiles sits up, turns toward him, and then puts his chin on Derek's shoulder. Eyelashes brushing his cheek. "My dad's working late tonight. You could come over. Only if you wanted. And if you need to stop. We'll stop."

"Maybe," Derek says, and he sounds almost as nervous as he feels. He covers his face with his palm, sighs heavily. "Sorry," he mumbles. "You're way too young to have to be dealing with my—psychosis."

"This isn't _psychosis_ ," Stiles says, smirking. Rolls his eyes fondly. Right, Derek forgot: Stiles investigates everything to do with anything he gets mildly involved in. Kid probably read up on the entire history of psychology when he was diagnosed with ADHD. Derek doesn't know where he finds the time."It's just a trauma. _Lots_ of people are traumatised, and there's nothing wrong with it. For example, a cool thing happened to Scott when he was a kid where someone was like, 'Hey, Scott! Let's watch this neat movie about _a boy with magical powers_!' and Scott goes, 'Oh, boy! Sounds like Harry _Potter_!' and sits down and watches _the fucking Sixth Sense_."

Derek grins wide, drops his head back against the top of the seat. "That didn't happen."

"It _definitely_ did. He's terrified of ghosts, now. And, he still doesn't trust movie summaries. Has to read the _synopsis_ on imdb before he'll watch anything that isn't a romantic comedy or a Pixar film." Derek chuckles. "And even _then_."

"Well, great," Derek says then. Looks at Stiles. He's still resting lazily on Derek's shoulder like a stupid parrot. "I'm afraid of physical intimacy, but at least Scott's afraid of thrillers."

"Yeah," Stiles says, eyes falling shut, a sweet smile spreading on his face. "Guess I always love the broken ones."

Derek is drunk on Stiles' scent. On a bad day, Stiles makes the air around him taste like a nap in front of the fireplace on a winter morning. On a good day, Derek doesn't even have the words to describe it, and it's still all he can do not to regress to age thirteen and compose a poem about it. Today is a wonderful day, and Derek tries to keep his swooning to a minimum.

::

Derek lets Stiles drive them to the Stilinski house, take his hand and lead him up the stairs to his room—it occurs to Derek that he isn't sure he's ever been in any part of the house but the upstairs. The kitchen table is covered in papers, and there's an empty whiskey bottle next to the sink.

Stiles seems to have a map to Derek's head. He shuts the bedroom door, locks it. Lowers the blinds, pulls the curtains. His bed is made (haphazardly), but he grabs the bedspread, the sheets, and smears them all over the bed into a rumpled pile of blankets and pillows. The room is sufficiently denlike, and Derek isn't sure whether he should be irritated by the stereotype or pleased Stiles knew it was true. He kicks off his shoes, hunches his shoulders self-consciously.

Kate never wanted to do it in a bed. Typically it happened in her car. One time they fucked on the floor of the hotel room she was inexplicably staying in. Derek had fleeting fantasies of her letting him have sex with her in a bed, in someplace that didn't smell and feel like some kind of foreign, unsafe location. The wolf in him hated Kate and her sexual habits, and it occurs to him now that perhaps she was doing that on purpose.

Stiles flops onto the nest he made of his bed. "C'mere," he says, smelling of anticipation. "We'll take this slow."

Derek gulps audibly, and crawls tentatively onto the bed. Stretches out, eyes on Stiles. "How slow?" he asks eventually.

Thin lines of light are cast across Stiles' face, from late afternoon sunlight filtering between the blinds, between the curtains. His eyes are wide. They look gold, like a beta's. It makes Derek want to bite him, make him a member of his pack, be with him on the full moon. Stiles shrugs, feigned nonchalance. "As slow as you want," he says. His voice is low, soothing. Fingertips ghost across Derek's arm, down it. His wrist. Derek holds his hand tight, and Stiles grins softly. "Do you want me to sing 'Down'?"

"Sing _what_."

Abruptly, Stiles belts out, "Even if the _sky_ is falling down!" and Derek has to cover his mouth with something, but Stiles is holding his hand. Stiles whimpers with repressed laughter into the kiss, and then has to pull back so he can finish snorting.

"You done yet?" Derek asks eventually.

"Sorry," Stiles says. Grinning hard enough to make Derek's cheeks ache in sympathy. "Sorry. I just wanted to know if you were down. Down, down, down. Down."

"I'm down."

"Okay. Okay, good. Cool. Do that again."

Derek does.

::

"I'm hungry," Stiles says brightly.

Derek turns, looks at him. They're curled up in the end of the bathtub, wrapped around each other, with the shower spray hitting them. It's an incredible waste of water, and Derek can't even bring himself to care when his feet are tangled up with Stiles'.

"Again, or still?" Derek asks.

Stiles grins. "Still. And for the record, you never have to ask that question."

"I could eat, too."

"Cool. Let's eat." He pauses, goes red, and frowns. " _Food_."

Getting up and eating—food—would include disentangling himself from Stiles' limbs and moving about in air that is slightly less saturated with the devastating scent of the two of them together. Derek would starve to death if it meant he could stay here without moving—and this is a weird, disconcerting thought, so he picks himself up and yanks the shower knobs so quickly the water stops with a clang.

Stiles doesn't notice. "D'you ever get, like, weird, debilitating cravings?" he asks, tossing Derek a towel.

Derek does. The only time he's ever actively rejoiced inheriting Laura's sexy-as-hell-but-fiscally-and-environmentally-irresponsible vehicle is when he's idle in the evening and suddenly his eyes pop open wide because he'd kill for fried chicken _right that second_. He just rolls into the KFC and eats drumsticks until he can't do anything but stare contentedly at a peeling advertisement on the window.

Derek also occasionally gets cravings for Stiles' terrible jokes.

"I guess. Why?"

"Because I'd give away the rebels' secret location to the empire if it meant I could have a hot dog, dude. Hot dog. _Stat_."

Derek's ears are still wet when he finds himself near a stand in the park with Stiles, watching him devour a hot dog in the most titillating way humanly possible. The best part: he's not doing it on purpose. Derek watches, awed. He's almost as happy as that bitch from the Target ad. 

"So I've been, uh. Thinking about something," Stiles says once he finishes the hot dog and purchases another. "It's just this memory. That I had. And I was wondering if you. Um."

Derek stares.

"Look, I just—my dad was telling me the other day about how I used to run around in circles whenever my mom tried to take me to the grocery store, and I remembered this one time when I was really little, and I was being a dick, and I crashed into this kid in the—"

"Cereal aisle," Derek says.

Stiles freezes, and then jerks his gaze up from his yet untouched hot dog. "What."

"The. The cereal aisle of the grocery store?" Derek clears his throat. "You offered me a—"

"A band-aid," Stiles finishes. "Jesus christ."

They peer at each other, each from one end of the bench, for several minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That story about Scott and the Sixth Sense is actually a story about me. Very frightened of ghosts.


	12. September

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek is a little bit afraid of falling in love. It's cool.

"Derek," Stiles says in lieu of a normal greeting, or even his customary irritation that Derek is in his bedroom unannounced. "Pop quiz."

Derek glowers, but says, "Okay," anyway.

Stiles drops his backpack by the door, climbs into Derek's lap on the bed. "How old am I?" he asks.

Derek raises his eyebrows, unimpressed, but Stiles just mirrors him expectantly. "Eighteen," says Derek.

Stiles beams at him. Presses up against him in the form of affection. "A double-plus," Stiles says softly. Like it was difficult; Derek went to his birthday party. Derek goes red in the face and hates himself for it. The teenager is only a fraction as self-conscious as Derek is. He wonders if that will ever change. Hopes Stiles doesn't tease him about it—even though he rarely does. "A cool thing about being a teenager," Stiles says, gratifying Derek, "is that I'm horny all the time."

Kate used to proposition Derek at inopportune times, and while at first he never said no, he started to drag his feet a little about it. There was only so many times Derek could skip Econ before the school called his parents. "You're a teenage boy," Kate would snort. "An attractive woman is asking for sex from you. Honey. Get in the car." Derek would get in the car.

Derek squirms, lets Stiles pull his t-shirt over his head.

"And I mean _all the time_. Even when I'm depressed or self-loathing or bleeding out or getting yelled at by my dad, if you came in and put your mouth on my dick, I'd be ready to roll immediately, probably. I'm operating in a perpetual cloud of arousal, dude."

"Don't call me 'dude,'" Derek says.

Stiles grins fondly at the false bravado. "You're cute when you're embarrassed." He tugs his plaid shirt off, drops it on the floor. Presses a kiss against Derek's lips. "And you also like me a lot." Stiles glances at Derek hopefully, as if there's a chance Derek will be like, 'lol no i don't, dumbass,' when Stiles is being adorable against his hard-on. Derek may be older than Stiles, but he's totally a slave to Stiles' long fingers, his eyes, his forearms, his voice, the way he smells. Still head over heels nuts about this kid. "Which means," Stiles goes on, "that you're willing to have sex with me sometimes."

Stiles leans in and puts his mouth to Derek's neck. "S-sometimes," Derek says, as drily as he can with Stiles' scent making him dizzy. He clutches at Stiles' thighs for dear life.

"But you're not available for sexing me while I'm in class," Stiles mumbles against Derek's skin. Using his _teeth_. "Or eating lunch with Scott. Or dodging Erica's spitballs. Or talking to Isaac during lacrosse. Or driving home. Eating dinner with my dad. Visiting my aunt in Chicago. So I let my imagination take over." Stiles pushes at Derek's chest, and Derek lets himself flop backwards onto the bed, lets Stiles straddle his hips. "I mean, I get horny for no reason no matter what I do, so imagining you screwing me during a test doesn't really change anything, does it?"

Their hands meet, fingers lacing together. Derek's lips twitch. "I hope you aren't as vocal when you daydream as when you're asleep."

Stiles smirks. "I hope so, too. The fantasy was _really_ vivid. I was supposed to be conjugating verbs, but I kept imagining you shoving me into the mattress. Opening me up." Stiles is blushing now, just as much as Derek.

Stiles yelps when Derek upturns them abruptly, rolling so he's on top. He pushes Stiles' t-shirt up, presses his palm, his fingers flush against Stiles' belly. Lets the warmth seep in through his flesh.

"C'n you—please fuck me?" Stiles asks, feigning exasperation.

"I'm starting to get the feeling you're seducing me," Derek replies.

Stiles barks out a laugh, which Derek swallows with a sharp nip to Stiles' full lower lip. "Yeah," Stiles says, voice rough; "I only want you for your body." Which might legitimately be a fear of Derek's if Stiles didn't punctuate it by cupping his face and kissing him deep.

Stiles is always really into it when they have sex, all encouragements and facial expressions and fingernails clawing him up. He acts like Derek is some kind of godly harbinger of ecstasy and satisfaction, like no one could fuck him like Derek can. Derek knows this isn't true, that Stiles is mouthy and attractive, smart, that he could easily find someone who could pleasure him better than Derek can. But maybe if he doesn't say anything, Stiles will stay with him.

Derek removes Stiles' jeans methodically, puts his mouth to his hip and feels him shudder.

Kate always used to pin him down in the back seat of her car, press her tongue flat against his muscles while he twitched, rock on him and let her face get overtaken with this huge, rapacious grin. She'd taunt him while she did it. Slapped him once, and giggled girlishly when he flinched and blinked back tears of shock. He always went home slightly confused, like he wasn't entirely sure if he felt good or bad about the whole thing. Which in itself was kind of hot, at the time, but Stiles is right. Derek was fifteen, thought he was in love. He'd have done anything Kate told him. _Did_ do anything she told him to.  

Derek works at Stiles with lube-dripping fingers, watching his face. The flush spreads down his throat, his chest. Blotchy, like Derek could taste it if he wanted. He wants.

Stiles doesn't taunt Derek. He doesn't think Stiles knows how to taunt him. He mostly swears a lot, begs for more, and comes with an almost hysterical expression on his face, like he can't even believe this is happening. He lets Derek cover him, hold his wrists, suck hickeys into his skin—Kate never let him mark her. "What're you, an _animal_?" she'd sneer, laughing at him, eyes _glinting_ in a way that haunted him in his nightmares well past his nineteenth birthday, but Stiles just blinks at his reflection before he showers and touches the bruises. Pretends to be offended that he needs to wear a scarf, and then late at night, as he's falling asleep with Derek, he sighs and confesses that he gets smug when Derek marks him up, like he's _claiming_ him.

Stiles has to brace himself against the headboard when Derek thrusts into him, has to latch onto Derek with his legs. Derek gets up on his knees, pulls Stiles on top of his thighs, for leverage. Grips his hip with one hand, his dick with the other, while Stiles' mouth falls open and lush.

The last time he had sex with Kate, Derek was in a terrible mood because his entire family was in town for the wolf moon. He was freshly sixteen years old, not that Kate had remembered or acknowledged his birthday, and for all she made fun of him for being an animal, there was something predatory and inhuman about the way she pressed him down and mounted him. He just laid there, came almost grudgingly. "You didn't even really need me for that, did you," he grumbled, buttoning up his shirt after, and she just tittered. Not a deep, throaty laugh, but a half-laugh. She couldn't even summon the energy to care enough to laugh at him properly anymore. It occurred to him that perhaps he loved her, but he wasn't positive she loved him back. The next day, he knew for sure she didn't. 

Stiles comes with a litany of swears and Derek's name like an oath; then he goes limp, weakly holding on to Derek's forearms, this fucked-stupid expression on his face. He's never anything less than joyous over Derek and him together in bed. Fingers up in Derek's hair. "Come on," he says, warm and breathless and loose, "do it, baby, come for me," and Derek is always startled into obedience when Stiles says shit like that.

Derek recovers quickly, while Stiles needs a minute to catch his breath. So Derek just disposes of the condom, props himself up above Stiles, watches his face, his slightly swollen lips, the sooty swell of his lashes. Presses kisses on the livid marks on his throat, his collarbone. Watches him breathe. Stiles takes a few moments before he opens his eyes and looks up at Derek.

"I really was thinking of you in Spanish today," Stiles tells him casually. "My teacher hates me for it. She knows I'm not paying attention. And I pass anyway. I think you're my muse."

"Fantasising about rough sex with me is improving your skill at the Spanish language," Derek confirms.

"Definitely," Stiles says, grinning wide when Derek uses the phrase 'rough sex with me.' "Imagining you rimming me got me through the preterite form. I can't use the imperfect tense without thinking about blowing you. How do you say 'I'm obsessed with your dick' in Spanish?"

"Yo obsessar," Derek begins, but he falls silent when Stiles starts laughing and can't stop.

Whenever Kate laughed, Derek always felt like he was missing something. (He was, actually.) One time he must have looked hurt, because Kate laughed again: "I'm not laughing _at_ you, stupid, I'm laughing _with_ you." Stiles never seems like he's laughing at _or_ with Derek. He always seems like he's laughing _for_ Derek.

Stiles winds his arms around Derek's neck. "We should get cleaned up and go get Taco Bell," he says contentedly. "I'd kill the last unicorn for a quesadilla."

But it's another twenty minutes of making out before either of them thinks about getting up.

::

Derek's only been to Taco Bell one time. He and his friends walked there after school one Thursday in November when he was about fourteen. They pooled the quarters they could find in their backpacks to purchase a gigantic Pepsi. They shared it until Laura came and picked him up; she'd just gotten her permit. Derek doesn't remember anything else about the place, so the overwhelming scent of grease and unidentifiable food items is a bit of a shock. He watches, mildly disgusted, as Stiles treats the smell like a harbinger of pleasurable sustenance instead of a source of surreptitious gagging. But he says nothing.

Stiles and Derek are sharing a bag of those little cinnamon twist crunchy things when Erica and Scott burst into the restaurant and bustle into the seats across from them.

"Really, guys?" Erica says. "Side-by-side in a booth. You should exchange necklaces."

"The kind with the little heart cut in half," suggests Scott cheerfully.

"With magnets."

"Engraved."

"Derek and Stiles: together forever."

"Stiles and Derek. Hale and Stilinski. Sterek Halinski." Erica and Scott burst into a fit of giggles together.

Derek had his first legitimate girlfriend when he was thirteen. Her name was Rebecca, and Derek spent a stupid amount of time composing prepubescent poetry comparing her skin to chocolate. Derek's friends called them Derecca and heckled them whenever they tried to _be_ places. They dated for four months, long enough for them to attend a school dance together and get to second base. In the end of their relationship, Rebecca was sitting patiently while Derek talked her ear off about baseball when his best friend sat down at their table and asked them if they were engaged yet.

"I'm in the eighth grade again," Derek says faintly.

Stiles ignores him. "Sure, coming from Romeo over here," he says to Scott. Derek doesn't quite know what that means, and neither Stiles nor Scott seem inclined to expand. "And besides," Stiles continues, "you missed the best possible portmanteau for me and Derek." He quickly brushes cinnamon sugar off his hands so he can gesture grandly, like a man proposing a newspaper headline. " _Stale_ ," he announces.

"Already?" Erica coos. "The love boat only just left the harbour."

"Listen, you guys," Stiles says, tone faux placating. "I love nautical metaphor as much as the next guy, but I'm _kind of_ in the middle of a date here."

"I knew it," Scott and Erica say in unison, Erica with relish and Scott with resignation.

Derek has apparently missed a crucial memo. "Are we on a date?"

"I was pretty sure we were," Stiles says, abruptly focused on Derek. He smells sweet, like cinnamon twists and Pepsi and fondness. "I mean, you paid. There was sex. We're sharing dessert. Scott's here."

Derek smirks. "I didn't know Scott was part of the date criteria. I also didn't know Taco Bell counted as a date." He's also pretty sure the sex is supposed to come at the _end_ of a date.

"Just because you refused to order anything, Sourtaco—"

"—The food smells like sawdust and chemicals, and I don't think you should be ingesting it."

Stiles grins magnanimously, all _yes, dear, I'm sure it did_. "Anyway, of course Scott is part of date criteria. It's only fair, because _I_ am part of _his_ date criteria." He squirms in his seat, adjusting his position so he can better lecture Derek and Erica (Scott sits and nods pleasantly). "See, he counts all the times he and his significant other eat lunch together at school as dates, and I am there for all of those. School lunch accounts for over seventy percent of his 'dates,' which means I am statistically an overwhelming presence in Scott's love life." He chomps down on a cinnamon twist. "Even though he wouldn't make out with me last year."

Derek turns to gape at Scott, who doesn't look nearly as uncomfortable with having had the chance to make out with Stiles last year as Derek wants him to be. Erica has a look of disgruntlement on her face. She waves Stiles' explanation away like a fly. "Whatever. Whichever one of you suggested Taco Bell as a date should get dumped."

"I don't recall telling either of you about us," Derek finds himself grumbling at her and Scott.

Erica chokes on a cinnatwist, and Stiles reaches over to thump her awkwardly on the back. "Like we haven't known for _weeks_!" she cries hoarsely when she can speak again. Scott starts rummaging through his backpack. "We've had bets placed on who will make the first move and who tops since May."

Scott nods mutely, gravely, and taps a piece of paper that has been taped to a binder. Stiles and Derek lean over it.

_Boyd 5/17 - Derek makes first the move and tops. Stiles complains the whole time_  
Scott 5/17 - do they have to be dating? ugh fine stiles makes first move and who cares who tops gross-os  
Erica 5/18 - Derek makes first move and Stiles tops and Derek cries and plays 'wonderwall' on repeat  
Jackson 5/21 - they are not fucking you guys are disgusting now stop putting this creepy list in my locker  
Isaac  5/21 - Stiles makes first move and it is  equal opportunity OBVIOUSLY  
Lydia 5/22  - Derek is going to go into heat or something and jump Stiles' bones. Stiles is going to be wearing a red hooded cape and travelling to visit his grandmother when it happens. Derek will be in drag. Derek will conquer Stiles consensually until Stiles faints. Nine months later, Stiles will give birth to a litter of useless alphas. A single tear will roll down Derek's cheek. 

Stiles hums, pleased. "I'm glad you guys have been spending your time so productively," he says. "Very creative. Isaac gets extra points for vehemence. And frankly, Scott, I'm a little pissed that I never noticed your weird bet list even though we have Chem together."

"This is my English binder," Scott says. He opens it to reveal a study guide with an ancient due date, and a creased note from Isaac that says _Indiana Jones marathon this weekend??_ with a drawing of Scott as a Christmas tree. Under it is written _DEF SHIZZLE_ and there is a drawing of Isaac as a stump of broccoli. Scott is a more talented artist than Isaac is.

Derek took a class called Webpage Design when he was a freshman. The class was two months of learning how to use search engines, followed by an irritatingly micromanaged Dreamweaver project. Derek failed the class impressively because he spent the semester learning to use Flash instead. He animated a five-minute film featuring his teacher, who was also the wrestling coach, as a Spice Girl. 

"So who's paying up?" Erica demands.

Stiles just smirks at Derek. "I'll, uh." He looks back at Erica, eyes sardonically wide. "I'll see you later, Erica."

"Ugh," roils Erica, but Scott pulls her up by her elbow and leads her out the door.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isaac wins! 
> 
> Also, behind the scenes: the sexy bit was one of the first parts of the fanfiction I wrote. It used to be in a Word document titled "Uh oh teenagers like sex."


	13. October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek's in so deep he can't even back out for Stiles' own good.

Derek doesn't like fire.

He hates it. You see, when Derek was sixteen, his entire family died. His entire family. Aunts and uncles he'd grown up seeing, aunts and uncles that were new. He'd been to their weddings, but his family was so huge, all the get-togethers blurred together. Cousins that hadn't learned to speak yet, cousins that were adults when Derek was born, cousins that used to lock a crying Derek in the basement when he was too short to reach the light switch. Mates of family members, pets of family members, all of it. Gone in a heartbeat. Because of Derek, and fire. Derek hates fire, and Derek, and _fire_.

He was out, at the fucking 7-11. He had intended to get, like, a slurpee or whatever after school, but upon getting there, he had suddenly realised he wasn't thirsty. He trudged back home, hands in his pockets, and smelled the smoke a half mile away. Even though he knew no matter how fast he ran, it'd still be too late, he sprinted, fully wolfed out.

Laura was shaking uncontrollably, on her knees in the front yard, weeping. Eighteen years old and desperate. Emergency vehicles everywhere. Flashing lights, yelling. Sirens. The fire had been put out, the house a smoldering mess, reeking of smoke and water and _flesh_ and _motherfucking mountain ash_. Derek could hear the house, creaking, wallowing in its own ruin. Everything was so _loud_ , blood rushing and throbbing in his ears, nothing was quiet, he could hardly _think_. His uncle Peter was being loaded into an ambulance, someone was talking to him, gripping his shoulders, _pulling_ , Derek's head was bursting. None of it was as loud as Laura's keening cry, and that wasn't as unignorable as the intensity of the stench of _burning_. He could _never_ get away from the _smell_.

Derek doesn't like fire.

And Derek. Derek blows Stiles in the back seat of the Jeep, Stiles' fingers raking through his hair, Stiles moaning like he'll die if he doesn't let it out. Which, considering how flushed he is, might be the case. Stiles comes in Derek's mouth, and Derek feels his eyes flash red as he swallows, drinks it up.

"Fucking hell, the way you taste," he gasps when he sits up, starts jerking himself. "Wish I could just eat nothing but your come." Stiles laughs sunnily at that, grins beatifically when Derek comes on him. Rubs it into Stiles' skin, mixing their scents. He likes that: as much as he loves Stiles' scent, and as soothing as he finds his own scent, nothing elates him quite as much as their scents combined. It becomes something entirely new, Derekandstiles (what did Erica say? _Sterek_ ) and he thought he wouldn't like that, tainting Stiles' immaculate scent, sun-warmed grass, cinnamon and derision, lobeira and _home_ , but he can't seem to get enough of it. Thinks about Turning Stiles, so Stiles can appreciate it as well. He puts his face against Stiles' neck, breathes in.

"You're such a fucking weirdo," Stiles says, watching him. Derek kisses his cheek. "Now we should clean this up. I don't want dried come all over my mom's Jeep."

Stiles' scent has always stood out to Derek. Sitting outside of the mental hospital while Stiles was inside, Derek could smell the spike in adrenaline when he shouted through the phone. He could smell it over the odour of chlorine and terror and exhaustion the night he identified the kanima. He smelled Stiles' unpleasant dreams the night he passed the Stilinski house after meeting with Chris Argent. Smelled his conspiratory pride on Derek's birthday. His arousal underneath Derek, his satisfaction now, as they readjust their clothing and clean up the car.

The thing about Stiles' scent is it blocks out other scents. Not quite enough to prevent Derek from smelling other things, but enough that he forgets the scent of burning.

Until they're intertwined.

::

It is Halloween, and Stiles has shooed everyone out of his room to Lydia's party. Scott has been bequeathed Stiles' Polaroid, and instructed to take at least three pictures of each person, including and especially Derek—not that it matters, because for Halloween this year Derek dressed up as a terribly angry person in Stiles' bedroom.

The thing is that although everyone made it out alive, and although he's never considered the rebuilt Hale house his home, Derek feels as if he's relived the winter he turned sixteen, and if he wasn't so nuts about Stiles, it wouldn't have happened. He came here to—to what, to scold him? To see him out of the hospital, whole and breathing? To cry, to hit him? Derek doesn't know, but he's here and suddenly he's yelling, and of course Stiles yells back. " _What_ , Stiles?" Derek is bellowing, even as he's wondering how this happened. "You walked into fucking _fire_. You'd be _dead_ if it weren't for me. What else is there to talk about?"

"Well, you can stop freaking _screaming_ at me any time now, Derek."

Derek feels his features twist as he drifts through a wave of rage, and Stiles stares, frozen, equally angry. "I'm not _screaming_ at you, Stiles," Derek says evenly, even though he was. "I don't think you get exactly how fucking _stupid_ what you did was."

"I don't think you get the fact that I knew what I was doing, you fucking asshole. If I hadn't gone in there, Jackson would have been trapped behind the mountain ash," Stiles snaps. "Did you _want_ Jackson to—"

"Don't give me that _there was no other choice_ shit, Stiles, the Argents were on their way! They're better equipped to—"

"Great, good to know you think I'm incapable of—"

" _Damn_ it, Stiles, that isn't the _point_!"

"Then what _is_?" Stiles looks like he's aching to get out of bed, maybe hit Derek. "For me to just _stand_ there? Just hang around with my dick in my hand while Jackson _suffocated_?"

"So this is—what—some kind of _hero complex_?"

"Compl—? Complex. You think I have a _complex_ because I was able to help, and I _did_."

"Yeah, Stiles, you got Jackson out. But then who the hell was gonna get _you_ out?"

"It doesn't _matter_ , Derek." Derek barks a mirthless laugh, evokes a religious figure and turns his back, eyes on the ceiling. "Oh my god, so I didn't anticipate the fucking roof caving in. I'm here now, alive, as is Jackson, you're fucking _welcome_."

" _Stiles…_ "

"I'll have you know that like five seconds after I moved Jackson, a beam fell right where he was, so just fucking try to make me apologise for that, because it _isn't happening_."

Derek whirls to face him, points at him. "Stiles, we got you out of there by the grace of _god_. If Scott hadn't realised you were missing—"

"What, Jackson didn't say?"

"He passed _out_ , and _I_ was dealing with Argent." He grimaces. "Apparently he has a problem with the way I endanger teenagers."

"Oh, like you set fire to your own fucking house," Stiles growls, giving his cell phone the evil eye. Derek sags. "Soon as I'm not laid up by a gimp leg, I'm fucking some shit up with Argent."

"Stiles, you're not doing jack _shit_ once you're not laid up."

"The hell I'm _not_ , it's Mr. _Argent's_ fault the house was lit up in the _first_ place! God _damn_ it, we spent _months_ making it not burnt, and now we have to start over."

Derek has to make this clearer. He takes a deep breath, and says roughly, " _We_ aren't doing _anything_ , Stiles."

Stiles looks at him a moment. Derek can feel the air around Stiles go cold suddenly, like a cloud blocking the sun, a stormy wind of the sea. Stiles stares at him, infuriated. Shuts his eyes, and opens them even angrier, blindsided. "Are you breaking _up_ with me?" he asks like Derek just suggested a tea party.

"Oh, like you haven't seen this coming for _months_ ," Derek snaps bitterly. Stiles doesn't respond, so Derek goes, " _College_ , Stiles. You're going to it. You're not just going to follow me _around_ anymore."

"Follow you around," Stiles repeats.

Derek exhales, hard, his jaw clenching.  Glares at Stiles, and Stiles just looks back, totally disarmed.

"Months," Stiles says. "You've been wanting to break up with me for months."

"N—" Derek narrows his eyes. "Stiles—"

"That's what you said. You said, you said for months." He swallows, looks determined. "I'm, I'm going to cry."

"Don't—" Derek flinches, raises his hands. "Don't make a joke out of this, Stiles."

"Does it _look_ like I'm _laughing_ , _Derek_?" Stiles says, words clipped and cracking like whips. " _I'm_ sorry, I must have _forgotten_ to take off my _clown mask_. If—if you want to go, then _go_. I'm, I'm not gonna force you to stay somewhere you don't want to."

"Damn it," Derek says, raking his fingers through his hair. "You don't _get_ it, do you. It's not _about_ whether I want to _be_ here."

"Then what _is_ it?"

"How about pretty much _every other reason, period_?" Derek presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, growls against his wrists. Then he looks at Stiles again. "Your best friend and your dad both hate me," he says.

"I dropped out of high school, got my GED, you could get a partial scholarship and get a _college degree_ ," he says.

"I'm a fucking _werewolf_ ," he says.

"You pity me," he says.

"I lost my family in a fire, and I almost lost you in a fire," he says, and things are getting too honest in here.

"Everything I touch burns to the ground," he says, covers his mouth with his hand, palm out.

"Never mind," he says.

Turns to go, but Stiles shoots a hand out and grabs his sleeve. "You're not leaving." Eyes wide, brow furrowed, head shaking.

" _And_ you think you can tell me what to do," Derek says, and he hates the way his voice wavers, hates that he breaks for Stiles, now of all times, when he needs to do the opposite.

"Same to you, asshole," Stiles says, dragging Derek over to the bed. Derek perches awkwardly on the edge of the twin mattress and Stiles hangs onto his sleeve, peering at him. Says softly, "So it's _not_ because you're sick of protecting me."

Sick—? " _Sick_ of—" Derek gives an offended, strangled, exasperated sort of sigh. " _No_. You _moron_. There's nothing I'd rather do than protect you." He can taste the relief coming off of Stiles, it's like cream. He clears his throat. "Short of maybe not having you get into trouble in the _first_ place."

"That was almost really sweet, and then you ruined it." Stiles puts his chin on Derek's shoulder. "But since you were almost sweet instead of continuing to try and break up with me for my own good, which: _never ever_ do that again—I'm going to level with you."

Derek looks at him sideways.

"You listening?"

He nods.

"Can't apologise for Scott—the man has his opinions—but my dad likes you almost as much as he likes me. You never get mud on the carpet, you flicked me in the ear for talking about pot, you _call him sir_ , which _no one does_ , and you gave him _fries_." Derek twitches. "Yeah, I know about that, douchebag. And I hate school, it doesn't interest me. Believe it or not, I like this whole thing we're in, especially now that my dad knows and I don't have to lie to him anymore. And werewolves are _awesome_ , which you and I agree on, so you lost me on that one. And you pity _me_ , too, and you _didn't_ lose me in a fire, and god, you have to know by now how _guilty_ and _pissed off_ I was before you. I just—" Stiles huffs angrily. "You _get_ me, and I'm _not_ giving that up just because you're trying to be some kind of martyring shithead. It's _not_ going to happen, Derek."

Derek squirms, realises he's sort of gone pigeon-toed and fixes it.

"If you're going to break up with me," Stiles goes on, "do it because—because I'm too hyperactive. My ears stick out, and I always do the exact opposite of what other people tell me. And I'm really self-righteous and kind of a dick, and I'm contrary, and I'm loyal to a _fault_ , and I cry too easily, and I bruise like a peach, and I crave attention, and I think gore is awesome, and when I was seven I liked _the Master of Disguise_ , and—"

"Stiles," Derek says.

"And I masturbate a _lot._ What."

Derek just looks at him wearily.  

"Those're the best reasons I can think of," Stiles says, "so I don't know why you're looking at me like that." He pauses, staring at Derek, quizzical. "Derek. Are you unhappy together?"

To say the bare minimum, Derek is not. He shakes his head.

Stiles lays back against the pillows, says softly, "I don't want us to break up."

Derek looks at him, just to look at him, but Stiles finds some kind of challenge in it.

"I don't!" he insists. "I just told my dad like a week ago that I'm in love with your wolf ass. He was all pleased, says it seems like you're _good_ for me. Clearly he doesn't know about the coronary thrombosis I'm gonna get from your bullshit."

"And by my bullshit you mean my concern for your well-being?" Derek grumbles.

"Yeah, that," replies Stiles. "What are…" He swallows. "What are we going to do about the house."

Derek watches his face a moment.

Aunt Darcy would probably yell at him for letting Stiles get away. She always looked forward to the day Derek would meet some "nice young lady" who "doesn't put up with his scowling." He likes to think she wouldn't be entirely too picky about Stiles not exactly being a nice young lady, because no one refuses to tolerate Derek's alleged scowling quite as naturally as Stiles.

"We'll see," Derek says, and Stiles gives him a tentative smile. Gives it to him, because it's probably some kind of gift. No one else does this for Derek—and even if they did, it wouldn't be the same.

Stiles reaches out, grabs Derek's hand. Pulls it close, and presses a kiss onto his knuckles. "Sorry for walking into fire, Derek," he says softly.

"Jesus, Stiles," Derek sighs. Leans down and kisses Stiles, and Stiles grabs his hair and doesn't let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Argents have a blood feud with another hunting family, and Allison made friends with their daughter. To put it extremely simply, both families overreacted impressively, and Chris was temporarily convinced Scott and his crew had kidnapped her. 
> 
> I'm pretty vague on the details. I mean, it happened in my head, but I wasn't there.


	14. November

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house is getting fixed again.

Stiles has a leg in a cast and an arm in a sling, but he insists that nothing will stop him from showing up to run Operation: Reverse Fuckery. He's wearing a backwards baseball cap and a t-shirt that he took from Derek, and Derek is having flashbacks of about a year ago.

Last time, they had Isaac's words, Stiles' weird and baseless determination, and Derek's general unwillingness to leave the two of them alone in his house. This time they have the entire pack helping: Scott with his t-shirt hanging from one of his belt loops, jeans too baggy, Jackson scowling and playing Draw Something with Lydia, collar popped around his neck and looking like a frat boy already, Boyd and Erica trying to _sand_ each other—Stiles makes them stop. Even Allison shows up. Apologises stiffly, and while there isn't any hugging or heartfelt anything, everyone lets her help them put up drywall, so there's that. If Derek catches her staring forlornly at various pack members now and again, it's no skin off his nose.

What took them three months last time now takes them three weeks, and by the time Stiles gets the cast off his arm, the house is ready for Lydia's Target touch again.

"Luckily, I saved all those pictures," Stiles says, grinning (Derek sighs in resignation). "I even made copies of the picture of cat boy Derek."

He produces the pictures, void, yet, of frames, from his backpack, and Isaac chuckles at the Halloween photo. "Straight out of a shotacon yaoi," he says, and Stiles declares that no one wants to know what that means.

"Here's hoping this one doesn't burn down," Jackson grumbles as the pack is filing leisurely out the door. Derek flinches, unnoticed, behind them.

"I'll drink to that," Erica says, and Derek is listening so intently to them all getting into various vehicles and driving to some secluded location wherein teenage shenanigans can take place that he forgets Stiles is still there. He limps his way over to Derek by the front window like Otto from Robin Hood and stands beside him. Beams like a light tower when Derek looks at him.

"Guess what," Stiles says. When Derek just looks expectant, he goes on: "Thanksgiving's coming up."

Derek has a lot of weird memories associated with Thanksgiving. He remembers a mish-mash of tables laid end-to-end from the far end of the dining room straight through the living room, family members shouting across at each other, his father and a couple aunts running all over with dishes of hot food. He remembers scowling while his brother heaped extra peas onto Derek's plate while their mother's back was turned. "Hey," he yelled, and Fred mimicked him in a falsetto, and his cousin Jessica laughed. He also remembers him and Laura in the back booth of a Village Inn, pressed together and sharing an entire sour cherry pie. For six years they continued to use their grandmother's prayer before they touched their food on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Derek stares at Stiles.

" _So_?" Stiles says, like Derek should know what he wants.

"What."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Do you want to do Thanksgiving with me and Dad or _not_ , asshole?"

The thing is, most of the time, Derek doesn't stay silent because he doesn't have anything to say. He stays silent because he bites his tongue on all the shit he wants to say, conveys it with a look instead. He's good at that. The only time he's ever really appreciated his own face. This time, however, Derek is genuinely at a loss for words. Stiles is talking again already, saying, "It won't be that huge of a shindig," saying, "Dad usually works, so we generally just get takeout," saying, "You won't have to bring anything but your face, I like that. And maybe some extra napkins," and Derek feels like passing out.

::

Derek is outside the Stilinski house. It's chilly enough outside that Derek is mildly uncomfortable. He thinks, _for Stiles and Isaac it must be blisteringly frigid_ , and smirks to himself. Then it fades, because the only reason the temperature is getting to him in the first place is his nerves. His jaw is starting to ache from clenching his molars together so damn much.

It's Thanksgiving, mid-day. The sheriff has to work that night, so Thanksgiving dinner is actually Thanksgiving lunch. Stiles has it on lockdown; Derek can hear him whistling to himself in the kitchen, unpacking Boston Market meals. Sides of creamed spinach and corn for the sheriff. Mashed potatoes for everyone. A brownie for Stiles. Stiles was live-tweeting the whole visit out of pure excitement. Derek wonders why he subscribed to text updates from Stiles.

Derek shuffles his feet. He brought pie. There is pie in his hands. It's cooling in the frosty air, but it isn't getting cold quite yet, so Derek figures he's got time to stand across the street, staring at the daunting manor that is the meager, two-story house. He isn't quite sure why Stiles invited him—after all, isn't this a family holiday? To be spent with one's family? Derek considers Stiles family, but seeing as Stiles actually has family (don't mention Peter), you'd think he'd show a little more discretion about who he lets in. The fact that Derek'd marry Stiles if the sheriff (and, uh, Stiles) would let him notwithstanding. Derek should probably go in soon.

When he's _ready_. Stiles stresses this, nothing before Derek is ready. Granted, Stiles was talking about sex. But Derek isn't ready to eat mashies with the sheriff. He needs to prepare himself.

Speaking of whom, Derek listens as the sheriff wanders into the kitchen, taking a deep whiff—probably of the gravy. This Stiles made himself: from a package. Low sodium. "Happy Thanksgiving, padre," Stiles says from the stove. Derek can picture him stirring the shitty gravy with a wooden spoon. He can't smell it from here, but anything prepackaged and labeled low anything is going to be shitty. He'll eat it anyway.

"Thank you, Stiles," says the sheriff.

"I am thankful for rotisserie chicken," Stiles quips.

"I am thankful for my son," replies the sheriff. In a tone that says, _this is cheesy_ , and _deal with it_.

There is a pause, both in the crackling of takeout bags and in words, and Derek knows Stiles well enough to guess that he's been startled into emotional silence. He's seen it in action. One time Stiles was singing the Backstreet Boys, "Am I your fire, your one desire," into a TV remote, and Derek deadpanned, "Yes," and the same thing happened. Stiles blinking wide eyes at Derek, shutting his mouth. Breath catching. The difference is that Stiles knows—he _has_ to—that Derek is stupidly in love with him. Meanwhile, he's spent the last year wondering if his dad is ashamed of him. Derek hears the muffled sound of the sheriff thumping Stiles' back and hugging him.

"Dad?" Stiles says, still sounding somewhat soft and vulnerable.

"Yeah, son?"

"I invited Derek to Thanksgiving. He's outside, panicking."

Derek wheezes, and lurches toward the door.

::

Derek keeps forgetting what the fuck he's doing here.

There is still a coven of witches after them—him, after him. Derek is twenty-o— _twenty-two_ years old. Derek is sitting stiffly at a wooden table, eating creamed spinach with the Stilinskis. Stiles is prodding the sheriff for the scoop on the latest crime, and the sheriff seems to be enjoying himself pretending to hold out and then giving up vague pieces of information that he knows will drive Stiles nuts—

"I can't say, son. I can't! You can ask all you want, but it's confidential, and I can't tell you about the heist."

"It's a _heist_??—I mean, oh, a heist."

—and Derek can't be _amused_ , he can't be safe and content when there are witches, his heart can't be pounding, wondering if Mr. Stilinski likes him, when there are _witches_ in Beacon Hills. Derek can't have this when there are _witches in Beacon Hills_. Derek can't _have_ this. He _can't_ have this.

"Der brought pie," Stiles tells his dad. "Actual pie, nice pie, not came-frozen pie. Are we grateful?"

"Very grateful for pie," agrees the sheriff.

"The Stilinskis _love_ pie," Stiles informs Derek, and Derek blinks himself through a flashback of his dad declaring to the waitress at the diner, "The Hales love pie!" and Derek cracking a grin because he really did love pie. _Does_ love pie. But who doesn't? He wonders if literally every family announces that they love pie, as a group unit. "Scott and his mom hate pie," says Stiles to his father indignantly. "They'd rather have cake, and pudding. On _Thanksgiving_."

"That's why we never invite them," the sheriff says, shaking his head pityingly, but it's actually because the McCalls spend Thanksgiving with family in San Luis Obispo, now with Isaac in tow. Derek hasn't seen or heard from Uncle Peter in two weeks. It's nothing new. Uncle Peter can't stand all the teenagers.

Stiles announces, "I think we should all have a moment of silence for Derek gifting us with pie."

The sheriff makes eye contact with Derek, smirks, rolls his eyes. Derek feels his own lips quirk up in response, because Stiles is ridiculous and everyone knows it. "You're never going to get rid of Stiles now that you've given him pie," the sheriff tells Derek.

Derek goes red, and his words stop up in his mouth, and Stiles rescues him by exclaiming, offended, that Derek brought pie for _everyone_ , and the sheriff agrees drily, "Yeah, all two of us," and Stiles returns that each of them would eat his weight in pie, which the sheriff concedes, all while Derek stares crazily at his wine glass full of cream soda and wonders how he's going to survive the rest of the afternoon if he has a conniption every time the sheriff refers, however casually, however subtly, to his son's relationship with Derek. Who is a werewolf. With witches after him.

Stiles retrieves Derek's pie, pumpkin pie, sets it on the table. He piles on a heap of whipped cream from a can with a flourish. Then he steps back, stands with the can dripping white shit down his wrist. Half-smiles at the table, at the sheriff, at Derek. "This moment is perfect," he says, and the sheriff makes a shooing motion with his hand and starts to dish himself some pie, but Derek and Stiles stare at each other, because it is.

::

"I'm telling you he likes you," Stiles says sleepily, coiled around Derek's body, warmed by contact. "He practically started drafting wedding invites at the table. I thought about casually reminding him it's still illegal." He lifts and ducks under Derek's arm, pulls it around himself. Forcible cuddling.

Derek knows Stiles isn't lying to him to make him feel better; he really does believe what he's saying. Derek just hopes Stiles isn't being overly confident—not that Stiles is known for his unending optimism. Derek knows he probably isn't quite the person the sheriff had always imagined Stiles would end up with—like, in any way. He also knows, every time Stiles winces as he puts his weight on his so-called "gimp leg," that there are people who are better for Stiles, people who don't inadvertently endanger his life simply by knowing him, people who are more capable of protecting him, people closer to his age—people who are actually _people_ , for one. But in the end, both Derek and the sheriff will defer to Stiles. Because it's up to Stiles to choose what idiot he spends his life with.

"He ate my brownie, didn't finish his cooked carrots," Stiles goes on. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, popping the joints in his toes as he stretches one leg. "But he didn't make any dog puns or any kind of aborted reference to our sex life. Which is much more than I can say for myself. So maybe he earned it. Just for Thanksgiving."

Derek is startled sometimes by how badly he wants Stiles. Like, long-term, serious wanting going on. He wants to marry the guy—not standing around awkwardly in front of his dad, making legally-binding decisions, but _marry_ him, the way _Derek's_ family did marriage. Intimacy, and the full moon, and tea, and that stupid crown of wolfberry leaves that 6-year-old Derek announced he would never put up with (to an audience of chuckling adults and irritated teenagers). Things change. But this is humiliating, and considering the other parts of it, there is a slight risk of hypothermia. For Stiles. And arrest for public nudity and lewd acts. For both of them. Plus, if he did that, he'd never be able to leave Stiles. At least, as things are now, all he'll have if they split up is a debilitating resurgence of trust issues in combination with a nasty dose of heartbreak. As things are now, it's just his human side tied to Stiles. If he and Stiles did—that other thing that he wants, Derek would be emotionally sewn to him.

Derek doesn't do anything halfway.

He sighs, embarrassed just thinking about it.

"Thank you so much for pie-ing us," Stiles says to Derek. Twists his head up to peer into Derek's eyes. Derek looks back, desperate. "I don't know how to make pumpkin pie. I can't even imag—like, wrap my _brain_ around how you take a pumpkin—" he gestures vividly, makes the shape and size of a large pumpkin in the air with his hands "—and turn it into a fucking pie." Cups his hands. Like he's holding a tiny pastry. Derek snorts. It's not even funny. He just likes Stiles.

Derek wonders what the sheriff truly would think about his son marrying a werewolf. Stiles' estimations—which Derek deems overestimations, frankly—aside, the sheriff seems on board with them dating—even serious-type dating, like they're doing now. Derek tries to imagine explaining to the man how exactly a werewolf marries someone, and wants to crawl in a hole just at the thought of it. He can just picture the sheriff telling him to get off his property or something. "I told him you're super important," Stiles told Derek when he invited him to Thanksgiving lunch, "so here's hoping that makes him check himself, and not wreck himself."

Stiles huffs, restlessly flings himself half on top of Derek. He insists, "I'm _really tired_. It's taking everything in my power not to be bombarding you with pet names right now. Like pudding. I want to call you 'pudding,' can I do that?" Derek narrows his eyes at the ceiling, shakes his head slowly. "I really like calling you 'baby.' Der-bear. Kitten waffle muffin cake. I've never called you that, but I could. At any moment." Stiles pops his knuckles. "Be on the lookout for kitten. Muffin, waffle. Whatever. Cupcake—no, that's Coach."

Derek's mother used to call him 'sweetheart,' even when she was frustrated with him. When she was _really_ pissed at him, he became Derek Glenn Hale, and he did not like being Derek Glenn Hale. Derek Glenn Hale was an asshat who did not get dessert. Laura called him 'doofus' until the day she died. No amount of grumbling and rolling his eyes would make her stop, and no amount of wildly desperate wishing will make her do it again. Kate used to call him 'honey'—but she called everyone 'honey.' Sweetie. _Pup_ —but that one was probably just Derek. No one has ever even threatened to call him 'Der-bear' until now, and it's so simple, so stupid, that Derek just _stares_.

"I like canned whipped cream," Stiles tells Derek. "I want to cover you in it and lick it off." Derek inadvertently makes a noise in his throat, and Stiles looks at him, grinning, pleased. "Was that a _Stiles you're turning me on_ , or a _Stiles please stop you're mortifying me_?"

Derek kisses him.

Stiles lays there silently, smiling at him, for a few moments. Looking like he's piecing things together—or like he's making some kind of plan. Or, most likely, that he's thinking about how much he likes to be kissed. "My aunt Darcy used to call me 'sugar,'" Derek offers.  

"Aw, Darcy." Stiles likes hearing about Darcy. "So is that a nice thing, me saying that, or should I leave that to Aunt Darcy?"

"Honestly," Derek says wryly, "she'd probably be really upset no one calls me emasculating pet names anymore."

"Didn't she used to call you 'Der-wolf?'" Derek blushes, rolls his eyes back up to the ceiling, and Stiles makes a noise Derek can only describe as a cackle. "Best. Well, then, for your aunt Darcy, I'll stop feeling like a sap for calling you 'baby' sometimes."

"Guess I can allow that," Derek mumbles self-consciously.

"Der-bear is never going away," Stiles warns. As if Derek has ever indicated he wanted him to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, I did not write this around Thanksgiving. I don't know why, but I was worried y'all would think that. 
> 
> Darcy is my favourite headcanon after Derek having a sweet tooth. Also, we know Isaac likes comic books; it didn't seem like too much of a stretch to assume he also, at one point, liked manga.


	15. December 2014

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is taking community college classes and living in the Hale house.

"Dude, c'mon," Stiles protests, frowning wide-eyed at his reflection in his phone screen. Presses the pads of his fingers into the bite mark on his shoulder and hisses. "Love means never having to say 'don't _bite_ me.'"

"You liked it," Derek replies. Stiles gives him a Look. Derek squirms. "You did!" he defends. "You were, like, whimpering and—"

Stiles drops his phone on the bedspread, holds up his palms. Face ruddy crimson. "I, yes. Thank you, Derek. I don't need a poetic description of the noises I make when I'm screwing you."

"'Whimpering  and' is not poetic. It's the opposite."

Stiles socks him painlessly in the forehead, plants his knuckles there.

"Stiles," Derek says, glaring from underneath Stiles' fist. "I can't Turn you. I need to be shifted to do that." Stiles drops his fist, blinking. "But you can hit me again if you want."

The winter Derek turned four, he spent the afternoon preceding the wolf moon with his cousins Dina and Corbin, who were nine and worldly. "I used to want to marry a princess," Dina confided in Derek, "but then I realised that was _irrational_." She pronounced the word carefully, enunciating each syllable with precision. Derek repeated it incorrectly. She ignored him. "I decided I would marry the CEO of a huge company."

"What's a seeyo," Derek demanded of her, tapping on her knee and glaring at her. "Dina. Dina, what's a seeyo. What's a seeyo, Dina."

"Shut up," suggested Corbin.

Dina addressed Derek. "A CEO is a big important company boss."

"Why."

"Because the company is big and rich."

"No. Why do you want to marry one."

"Oh. Because they're rich. They have a lot of money."

Derek frowned so hard his face hurt, just to display his opinion of her future plan. "I want to marry an angel," he said harshly, so fervently he felt his eyes flash gold. "I want to marry a magic angel who plays sports. I'm going to bite her."

His cousins made a mirrored expression of disdain. "That's stupid, Derek," Dina sighed pityingly, Corbin nodding beside her. Derek scowled.

"You've never bitten me before, though," Stiles grumbles. "I mean, you've—with the _hickeys_ , but this is different, you straight-up _bit_ me—like an apple, jesus."

"You encouraged it," Derek says, shoulders hunched.

"So you're saying you did it because your wolvely precognition told you I would get off on it," Stiles retorts, ears going vibrantly red. "Like the fangs, and tying you up, and you _knotting_ me until I _cry_ —"

Derek throws his hands up over his ears, like this will help. " _No_ , I did it because—" He glares impressively. "I don't know. I just got carried away. I wanted to taste you."

There's a long silence, and then Derek hazards a glance up at Stiles, who swallows. "That," Stiles says weakly. He clears his throat and begins again, clearly trying to keep the bass out of his voice. "That probably just dethroned item number two on my list of Top Five Sexiest Things Derek Has Ever Said. It just goes to show you how fucked-up kinky you've made me."

"You can't _make_ someone kinky," Derek says, squirming again.

"Uh, pretty sure I beg to differ, there, Sourdouche," Stiles says, pulling his hoodie on over his head. "It's not like I never jerked off or fantasised before you. It's just that it never involved _pain_. Until I experienced magical midnight forest frottage. Which is totally the gateway drug to wolfed-out anal on the hood of a Camaro."

Derek rubs his temples. "Stiles."

Stiles shrugs, all _I'm just saying_. "I should go pretty soon," he says, zipping up his backpack. He stands, blocks the window, and the early evening light breaks into sunbeams around him. "If I'm late to class again, Reagan's gonna start knocking off letter grades with his dick." He pushes his sleeves up over his forearms, and Derek takes in the image of him, drinks him in. "Don't forget my dad's birthday on Saturday, so we should grab him a present tomorrow. While we're out, we can Christmas shop. I've already got your gift and you're going to cry because it's the greatest."

Derek also already has a present for Stiles. He always feels stupid when he gives Stiles presents, like he's a toddler handing him some crayon-speckled construction paper and it's supposed to express gratitude for all the shit he has to put up with. Like Derek biting him during sex.

"Sorry for biting you," he says gruffly.

Stiles presses a kiss against his forehead and heads toward the door. Says, "Just warn me next time, wow," as he leaves.

And Derek hangs his head, doesn't know what he meant by that. _Hey, Stiles, heads up: I'm about to bite you because your dick is in me and I can't even handle all these feels._ That isn't happening. He'll probably just not bite him again.

Abruptly, Stiles pops back in the door. "But definitely do it again," he says, and slams the door shut again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is still an angel.


	16. 3 years later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek hasn't the foggiest idea how he ended up here.

"Did you give him a bath?"

Derek and Stiles stand in a darkened room, peering into a crib at a sleeping baby with a halo of brown curls. The baby's wearing footie pajamas—as if Derek did not think the kid was precious enough, Scott had gifted them with footie pajamas—and sprawled out in the folds of a yellow blanket.

"No," Derek replies. All in hushed tones, of course; not that he'd wake up. He seems to find their voices soothing. Even Stiles'.

Stiles brings the back of his hand against Derek's shoulder in rebuke. "Derek. C'mon."

"I—He fell asleep. I was going to, but he fell asleep."

"Did you overstimulate him? The book says you're not supposed to get him all riled up before bed."

The book is some kind of _How Expect When Expect Baby Expect_ kind of thing, a present from Stiles' still-adjusting father. He gruffly brought them the book and a blanket that was Stiles' as an infant. Stiles, hormonal, cried about it. He did it again when Derek stuck the baby in the blanket the first time. "I am ill-equipped to deal with this," Stiles sobbed. "I have been emotionally compromised."

"I didn't do anything, Stiles, he's a werewolf. Tomorrow's the full moon. He just—"

"The book says—"

"The book was written by humans. For humans."

"Well, _now_ you're just making it sound like some kind of political movement."

When Derek was fourteen, he babysat his newborn cousin Carla. It was his aunt's first evening out since the kid had been born, and she left him with lists and provisions and quid pro quo and phone numbers, all of which Derek forsook on the kitchen counter. He fed Carla, changed her, and then fell asleep with her on the couch until her parents got home. Unlike Stiles, Derek seems to have an immediate knack for children. Ironic, considering his is the only one he doesn't hate.

"We can give him a bath in the morning," Derek promises.

"Thank you."

"Since you think he needs it so bad."

"Listen up, sourwash, since _you_ wouldn't let me name him Wizardsleeve, _I_ get to decide when he takes baths. That's the law. I should have put that in our nuptial vows."

Stiles had a list of names in a journal. He kept them all from Derek until right before the kid was born. Woke him up at two o'clock in the morning the week of to list them all for him. Half of them were so stupid they had Stiles in stitches before he could get the complete name out of his mouth. The final name he came up with for a boy was Wizardsleeve, a "name" he couldn't handle the entire first month the kid was alive. He'd pick him up, call him by his name, and then start wheezing and calling him Wizardsleeve. The baby looked on, dubious. Derek questioned all life decisions.

"Well, you didn't. That wasn't the exchange we made," Derek says. Shrugs him off with a roll of his shoulder. "The exchange was I get a kid that isn't named Wizardsleeve, and he doesn't have to be named fucking Wizardsleeve. It's win-win."

Stiles leans on Derek just to be intrusive. "You're just mad you didn't come up with it, loser." Even in the dark, Stiles' thoroughly human eyes have a tendency to gleam in a way that makes them look almost incandescent. His eyes are so expressive that even when he deadpans (which—no one can deadpan like Derek can deadpan), Derek can tell he's not being serious. Derek stops looking at him. "Oh, well," Stiles says, going slightly softer, as he tends to do when he looks at the sleeping kid, who is drooling. Stiles wipes it up with the blanket. "At least his middle name is Horsepower."

Derek blinks. Looks back at him. "That—that might be a consolation if it were true. But it's not."

Stiles shrugs, smiles. "Wishful thinking."

Stiles chose many thoughtful names. Some after stars, galaxies. Some family names, names Derek associates with love and family, names Stiles associates with books and rainy afternoons. Some based on other languages, Russian and Latin. Some after mythology—his favourites had to do with wolf mythology, which he researched diligently, Derek watching silent and swelling with something like pride, or pleasure. Derek isn't good with _words_ like Stiles is, can't share with him the stories he grew up with. Not all of them, anyway. But Stiles wasn't discouraged, didn't just resign himself and their kid to a life of not quite understanding Derek. He did what he does best and buried himself in books, books Derek remembers seeing around his house before the fire, and soaked it all up for nine months. Sort of a crash course in lycanthropic culture. Stiles learned the words of Derek's family. He tells the stories to the baby at night sometimes, and it's exhilarating hearing them. Like they're alive again.

Still, one of his top girl's names was Concussia. "Like a _concussion_ ," Stiles managed, teary-eyed and gasping at 2am on a Thursday, "only, like, with an _uh_ at the end. C'mon. Her middle name—" He couldn't quite make it through her middle name.

"So she's an injury." Derek's voice was ragged from exhaustion and some semblance of amusement.

"One that might kill us," Stiles said, "if we aren't woken up every hour."

It was probable Stiles was broken. Derek figured he'd stick it out.

"Maybe you can name the _next_ one Horsepower," Derek says, hanging over the edge of the crib and breathing in the milk-and-warmth scent of the kid. Their kid. Derek hangs over the crib, and Stiles hangs over Derek.

"You really shouldn't joke about that," he says urgently, "because I'll do it. I swear I will."

"I _might let_ you, though. We could have one upstanding member of society, and one horribly quirky everchild."

"Ugh, I love you, let's do that. Wizardsleeve Horsepower Hale." Stiles starts stifling his laughter, hand over his mouth, forehead dropping to the edge of the crib. "It's so perfect. You're perfect. Let's conceive right now. I'll let you handcuff me, even."

"…Christ."

Derek would die before he let a kid of his be named an inside joke. He would die. If he can somehow manage to get shit in middle school for being named something as abysmally normal as Derek, he isn't even going to touch the prospect of a kid named after some kind of—mythical—garment—portmanteau—nonsense. But, Derek is willing to fight this battle _after_ creating the child in question.

"Just a heads up, though," Stiles says, leading Derek out of the baby's room by his hand. "We are never naming any of our kids Derek Jr. Never ever."

Derek scowls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> His name's Sammy and [damn have I got headcanon about him and his pending brothers and sisters](http://archiveofourown.org/works/660439?view_full_work=true). 
> 
> Sorry for the implied mpreg.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all need to help me out with the tags, here. I'm new.


End file.
